


What Dreams May Come

by AnnaMcb24



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Charles may or may not be sane, Dreams, Everyone is traumatized, F/M, M/M, Post-Shaw, Raven and Hank have belligerent sexual tension, Sharon is not entirely incompetent, Trigger warning: Holocaust references, Trigger warning: implied sexual assault, Trigger warning: lots of implied violence, Trigger warning: past trauma, trigger warning: attempted suicide, trigger warning: self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-20
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-02 06:38:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 37,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/366047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaMcb24/pseuds/AnnaMcb24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a Kink-Meme prompt: http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/7736.html?thread=14306616#t14306616 Though I've sort of strayed from it.</p><p>Erik is a holocaust survivor who has recently lost his wife--the only person in his life who kept him sane. He continues to suffer in his dreams--facing the same agonies that plagued him in his early life--until one day he dreams of a young boy who endeavours to free Erik from his subconscious prison. However, the boy holds a great many secrets and, while he works to save Erik, Erik works to reveal his saviour's identity.</p><p>Meanwhile, young Raven Xavier has lost her mother and is slowly uncovering the secrets of her family home--secrets that will lead her directly to one Erik Lehnsherr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It isn't the end until it begins

> _To die, to sleep;_
> 
> _To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:_
> 
> _For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,_
> 
> _When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,_
> 
> _Must give us pause—there's the respect_
> 
> _That makes calamity of so long life._
> 
> -William Shakespeare, _Hamlet_ , Act 3, Scene 1.

 

Erik knows that the others have dreams. He hears their screams in the night and their sobs upon awakening. He knows what they dream of too—endless walls topped with barbed wire, the numbness of frozen extremities, the stench of death...

They all have those dreams and anyone of them who denies it is, in Erik's opinion, a liar and a bad one at that.

Their dreams all have their own personal spins, he supposes: Guri dreams each night of his dead sister who was shot in front of him as they were being dragged out of the train cars; Saul dreams of dead bodies (piles and piles of them, rotting and freezing) and horrific infections; Gabriel dreams of running through the forest, naked in the icy cold winter, trying to get away from the pit filled with fresh corpses, trying to escape his own death.

Erik doesn't know what Magda dreamed of. She never told him, so he never asked and now it's too late. She used to wake him from his nightmares and press her lips to his, warm and soft, until nothing existed but the two of them.

But Magda is dead now and Erik is leaving Israel forever.

He takes a boat to Italy—going directly opposite from the way he entered Israel. He is retracing his steps, just in case he left something behind long ago, something to hold onto.

He only stops when he reaches Nuremberg, his childhood home, but it's different now. The streets where he used to run are changed. Even the ghetto is gone—or so melted into the rest of the city that it's practically gone. He goes to the address of his father's old store, but the building has been torn down and replaced with another. It's not a jewelry store anymore and it's not even run by Jews. Everything is gone.

He doesn't really know where to go from here.

He finds a hotel that evening, lays on the bed and thinks about the hot, dry air that must be blowing across Haifa at that very moment. He thinks about the way the wind used to catch Magda's hair, turning it into a mess of dark, thick curls for him to bury his face into. She used to laugh when he did that, her hands catching his waist and tugging him closer. She would bring her head back and take his lips with hers and warmth would spread through him, brighter than sunlight.

And, suddenly, there is snow.

A knife is being dragged over his skin. He can feel it—in the same way he can feel that it is exactly twelve centimetres long and that the point rests about one millimetre from his skin, the blade slicing him open. Thick, rough fingers are shoved into the cut, rubbing against the exposed flesh beneath and Erik can barely think because nothing has ever hurt like this.

His mother is watching him, her eyes large, frightened, beautiful. She is telling him that everything will be alright, that she'll protect him.

Schmidt's hands are all over him, inside him, taking everything, ripping it all away until Erik is left as an empty shell—bones and flesh and nothing more. Schmidt smiles as he he does so and all the other men stand and watch as Erik tries to scream.

Schmidt's hands burn, but every part of Erik is freezing to death.

A small girl is standing before him as he screams. She is thin and dead, her dark hair matted with blood, her hands curled up in loose fists. Erik is supposed to move her body, supposed to strip it and stack it with the others, but he is in agony and he's inside and he's outside and he can't scream because his mouth is full of Schmidt and his mind is full of Schmidt.

There's nothing left—there's nothing left—there's—

And there, across the frozen yard—across the mass of corpses that still move, their limbs skeletal and their eyes dead—there is a young man—no, a boy. His hair is thick and dark, falling in gentle waves around his face. His skin is pale, but there's a flush to his rounded cheeks that speaks of heat and laughter and happier times than Erik has ever known. He has a certain strength of expression, a certain solidity that Erik can't and doesn't truly understand. His lips are soft-looking, cherry red and slightly parted.

And he looks at Erik.

His eyes are bluer than the Mediterranean, bluer than a thousand summer skies. They're bluer than anything Erik has ever seen in his lifetime.

The boy smiles and Erik is suddenly filled with warmth, brighter than sunshine.

 _You are not alone_ , he says, his lips not moving.

And Erik snaps awake.

 

***

 

Charles knows it wasn't always like this. He can still remember when he was younger, picking up vague sensations, feelings of sadness or love, but not truly understanding what they meant. He can remember dreaming properly—images of his mother’s face mixed in with stories his father told him at night. He can even remember the silence when his mother lost his little sister before she was even born (“ _Put your hand here, Charlie—Elizabeth is saying hello!_ ”), when the house became so empty of life and sound that as he shouted in the halls for anyone to come and play with him, his voice echoed back to him.

And then his father died.

As Charles stared at him in the hospital bed, his face unrecognizable, his clothes blackened and bloody, he reached out his mind—without meaning too, without even being properly conscious of it—and made contact.

And the world exploded in noise—incessant, never-ending noise, wrenching through his mind, leaving him with memories unlived, losses unfelt. It poured into him, stretching into every corner of his consciousness, ripping open the door to his subconscious and filling it too. It _overflowed_ and _shrieked_ and _ripped_ and _stretched_.

And Charles screamed.

He did not attend his father's funeral.

To her credit, his mother did not send him to an institution at first. (Though she wanted to, he could feel it in her very bones that she wanted him as far away as possible. Separation for self-preservation—she couldn't lose her son, physically or mentally, so soon after her husband—and he doesn't blame her.) Instead, she brought doctors to the manor. They tried their best, studied him, observed him and, at the age of ten, he was moved to a facility just outside Oxford, England to be studied further.

His mother did not object.

He rolls his wheelchair over to the window in his small, cluttered flat, trying to ignore the press of thoughts coming from the street below. (He's become so much better over the years at controlling the noise, though it still never stops.) He lives on the third floor and the building doesn't have a lift, but that's okay, because he's not allowed out on his own anyway. Books are stacked all over the room, the biggest mound forming some sort of miniature Mount Everest on his coffee table. Loose papers and old notebooks litter the space too, but there's nothing on the floor, so at least he can say that for himself.

It's still a point of pride that he lives by himself, though the kitchen is locked at all times to him and a nurse comes by three times a day to make him meals and give him his medicine. It's an even greater point of pride that he lives by himself _within_ the city. He used to have trouble even coming near the denser population— _too much noise, noise, noise—_ but he's become better.

He's better now. Sort of. Though the doctor comes to visit twice a week to “see how he's getting on” and he doesn't know anything, because Charles makes sure he doesn't and both he and the nurse are blissfully unaware of the piles of food that sit in the garbage.

The first step to his release from the asylum (he was one of four patients, which he always found a little amusing for no particular reason) was a book on genetic theory brought by one of his tutors. He was a genius, apparently—the doctors were already in the midst of experiments to understand the link between his prodigious mind and the voices that screamed through his thoughts, the way he could send out his own thoughts in return—but he took to genetics with more vigor than any other subject. He was a genius, theorizing and hypothesizing within a matter of weeks, performing small-scale experiments within a matter of months. (These experiments were, of course, observed. He was— _is—_ always watched.)

And then he received a visit from a Professor Nathan O'Brien—a geneticist from Oxford. He and Charles began their work together in the asylum, until he finally pulled enough strings to get Charles a place in the university. Just one-on-one courses, the two of them making leaps unimaginable to anyone else.

And there Charles is now—twenty-eight years old, unable to live without supervision, without _noise_ , but freer than he thought he ever would be, considered God's gift to the genetics community. A truly mad genius.

He doesn't tell anyone what he does with his days off (and he has a lot, but he needs them after the cacophony of the university two days a week). They don't understand, though he's getting closer to proving that he _isn't_ insane (though he might be by now—it didn't start that way, at any rate) and that being able to speak without _speaking_ isn't a bad thing. They _can't_ understand how it feels, trying unsuccessfully to close his mind, to cram everything into the confines of his miniscule skull. They don't know what it's like.

He closes his eyes now, feeling the warmth of the sun on his face, and just _stretches_.

And he is everywhere all at once, seeing the sun and the clouds and the _world_. He lives a thousand lives and kisses a thousand lips. He feels _everything—_ every emotion imaginable. They're all around him, millions and millions of minds and he slips in and out, living vicariously through them.

Hours pass.

Until he finds himself drawn inexplicably toward a single mind, somewhere far away, just at the edges of his range, and he follows it.

And, suddenly, there is snow.

 

***

 

Raven knows she's been blessed, but that doesn't mean she has to be happy right now.

She was seven when she broke into the manor. It didn't take very much effort—the side door into the kitchen was actually unlocked and no one was standing guard inside. She immediately made her way to the refrigerator and pulled out a bowl of peas. She hadn't eaten anything in almost a day, too desperate to lose anyone who might still be chasing her from that grocery store.

She ate _everything_ , or, rather, anything that seemed fresh, including a pastry that made her nose tingle and her head feel light. She could've slipped out easily, but there was something so very strange about the house—a castle seemingly dropped into the middle of New York state—and a swell of curiosity urged her further inside.

The carpet under her feet felt as soft as storm clouds and, as she walked, she ran her hands over the wood paneling, enjoying the texture under her fingertips. She eventually reached a doorway and took a step forward into a dark sitting room. A fire was burning in the grate, bright and cheerful. Hulking shapes of furniture cast long shadows that shifted and danced across the floor. Raven advanced a little further and saw something shift on the sofa closest to the fire.

She gasped and stumbled back, tripping over the carpet and landing with a hard _thump_ on the floor.

The person turned and stood up from the sofa, silk shawl trailing behind. It was a woman—tall and graceful-looking, with limp blond hair that curled softly and an empty wine glass in her hand. Her face was in shadow as she walked slowly toward Raven, her movements fluid like a dancer's. Raven stared up at her from the floor, small, scared and blue.

And then the woman spoke, her voice accented and a little amused.

“Well, would you look at you!”

As the woman bent down, Raven could see that her eyes were rimmed with red. She helped Raven to her feet and led her across the room, her grip so light that her hand seemed to only ghost over Raven's shoulder.

“Come closer to the fire, my dear. I'm Sharon Xavier. What's your name?”

“Raven.”

The woman smiled and the flickering light of the fire made her features appear somehow broken.

“That's an unusual name. How old are you?”

Raven swallowed. “I'm seven.”

There was a pause and the woman ran a hand over Raven's cheek, her fingers catching on the rubbery scales.

“I almost had a daughter about your age. I've always wanted one.” She pressed a finger against Raven's hairline; her eyes focused somewhere far away. And then her gaze snapped back, suddenly over-focused. She smiled again, her blue eyes brimming with tears. “How would you like to live in a spooky old house with a sinful old woman?”

Sixteen years later, Raven throws dirt over her mother's grave and pretends to be beautiful and blonde and graceful, just like the woman she mourns.

It hasn't been easily, growing up with Sharon, but it's much better than the life Raven knows she could've had. She could've been dying on the streets at the age of ten or drowned at the bottom of a river. God could've been cruel to her and, instead, he blessed her.

She loves Sharon and knows, that in her own way, Sharon loved her too.

But there's a certain madness to living with a woman who has lost so much in such a short space of time. First a daughter who did not even have a chance to be born; then a most beloved husband in a tragic, violent manner; and, finally, her only son, who, according to some of the staff, went insane shortly after his father's death.

Raven doesn't know very much about her “brother.” Sharon talked of him rarely and when she did, it wasn't in the same calm, coherent fashion in which she spoke of her husband and daughter. She was always confused on the subject of Charles, sometimes speaking as if he were long dead and sometimes as if he were going to be home any minute for tea.

One day, she finally found the courage to ask about him. Her mother looked at her strangely, her voice soft and cracked at the edges as she said:

“He is as dead to me as a son as I am to him as a mother.”

Raven wasn't sure what that meant—she still isn't sure, for that matter—but Sharon threw a nervous fit right afterward, so she never asked again.

There are photographs of Charles, though. They sit innocently around the house—images of a small boy with thick dark hair and a round, happy face. He stands between a short man with a soft smile and a neat mustache and a blonde woman with laughter in her eyes. Sometimes Raven finds Sharon staring at these, her gaze distant and unfocused, and so Raven shifts into different skins to make her laugh.

But at the end of it, Sharon would always touch her cheek and say:

“Be blue, my darling.”

Sharon often said what a pity it was she couldn't show off all of Raven's talents and her natural appearance, but, as she said, “The ladies at the club are shocked enough when I change the color of my lipstick. We'd best not risk it.” Raven always smiled at this, because it meant it was a secret for just the two of them, another to add to their home of whispers and shadows.

And memories.

But that's over now and Raven is twenty-three and has no idea where to go from here. She's educated, yes, and wealthier than she really understands, but she's spent most of her life caring for Sharon, loving and being loved. She has nowhere to go from here.

Two days later, she's sitting with her mother's lawyer and accountant, both of whom are wearing expressions that Raven knows mean there's something they don't want to tell her. She waits calmly, staring at the two men with sharp, yellow eyes.

The lawyer finally gets up the courage, running his fingers through his thinning hair as he speaks.

“You already know, I believe, of your inheritance,” he begins and Raven nods even though she isn't sure of the exact amount. She doesn't really care at any rate. She still feels a little numb, suspended from reality. He looks at her again, pale eyes a little watery. “You are aware also that Mrs. Xavier once had a husband and son, yes?” She nods again, drumming her blue fingers against her thigh.

The accountant leans forward. He's younger than the lawyer, but hardly less odious, in Raven's opinion. His glasses slip down his nose as he speaks. “You are aware, yes, that a certain percentage of your money must be spent each month to continue your... uh, brother's care?”

Raven starts at this and it's like something has finally been switched on in her brain, something that shut down after her mother passed away just a week before. “What?”

“Well,” the accountant is laughing a little now and Raven has to consciously stop herself from leaping across the table to hit him, “you didn't think the doctors worked for _free_ , did you?”

She gives a cold look, or as cold a look she can muster with all the anger that's burning at the back of her mind. “I'm just a little confused. You see, I thought Charles Xavier was dead.”

The lawyer's almost transparent eyebrows shoot up, his whole hairline moving back in surprise. “Died? Charles Xavier was sent to England for further treatment of a mental condition about two years before you were adopted.”

“Luckily, the cost has gone down over the years,” explains the accountant, as though this is supposed to cheer her up somehow, “but we thought you ought to be reminded.”

Raven stares at them.

“You, um, you should also know,” says the lawyer, reaching down into his briefcase, “that your mother wrote a letter to Charles to be sent after she died.”

“But if you don't want it to be sent, we'd completely understand,” the accountant cuts in quickly, some of his ginger hair falling out of its careful style. “It doesn't have to be sent, obviously.”

Raven isn't sure how to respond to this. She looks down at the envelope now resting on the table. Her mother's shaky handwriting has faded a little and the paper looks water-damaged, parts of the ink almost invisible.

 _My darling Charlie_.

She swallows hard and looks up at the two men.

“Find out where my brother is and get me a flight to the nearest airport in about two weeks time.” She stands, tucking the envelope in the pocket of her coat. “I have a few things I have to arrange first.”

 

***

 

Erik decides to go to Britain next—best to get out of continental Europe, he thinks, before they try anything again. He is the only person awake on the ferry across the channel and, after they dock, is left at a bit of a loss. He doesn't really know England at all—he speaks English, but it's an odd sort that he's picked up from American soldiers and an Irishman he knew in the IDF named Costello. Maybe he should head straight on to Ireland.

He finds a train going up to London. He may as well fly to Dublin from an airport he's memorized the layout of previously. (It was going to be a sting operation, but it was canceled before the team was even properly assembled.) On the train, he stares out the window, thinking of the man in his dream, of the color of his eyes, and he isn't really sure what he's doing anymore.

Flights out of Heathrow, it turns out, are canceled until the following Monday due to bad weather, so Erik finds a small room to rent and prepares to wait.

He has nothing left. He's not even sure why he's alive now, why God has left him alive. Everything has been stripped away and he is now only bones and flesh.

There isn't even Schmidt now. Or Magda. They died together.

The last time he saw her, she was smiling up at him from the bed, her wild hair spread out over the pillow, her smile broad and excited. She left while he was sleeping and never came back. He wasn't allowed to see her body (“It's not Magda anymore,” they said. “It will do no good.”), but he was given the official report of what happened.

According to the only living witness—a young man who was badly burned afterward and lost a leg—he and Magda had started a correspondence a few months before. She was under an assignment from Mossad. (“We couldn't've used you, Lehnsherr,” they said. “You were too personally involved to be useful.”)

She managed to make contact with the witness a few days before the assignment was shut down as useless and unlikely. But Magda continued anyway. She had already been told by the witness where Schmidt was going to be—a ship just a few miles from the coast to meet with some friends from Turkey. She took a boat out by herself in the middle of the night and reached the ship.

The witness didn't know many details about what happened from there. Apparently she managed to sneak up behind Schmidt and stab him through the back of the head. But then the other members of the crew found her. She told the witness to go to her boat which was supposed to be their escape and then the shooting started. It was supposed, because the witness saw nothing from around this time, that a bullet struck one of the gasoline tanks that sat on deck.

The ship went up in flames.

And that was all.

He stares out the window at the brick wall of the next building. Though the window, he can see a young couple having sex. He watches them for a few moments, then sits down on the thin, dirty mattress and rolls a cigarette.

There's nothing.

He smokes until the hot ash reaches his fingers then throws it on the floor and lies down, staring at the ceiling, watching it grow darker and darker—

He's screaming and he's _screaming_ and Schmidt and Schmidt and Schmidt _and Schmidt_...

Schmidt presses himself against Erik, forcing the air from his lungs, ripping out everything until Erik is bones and flesh and nothing more. There's heat and it burns, searing his throat and he gags on the metal instruments that tear at his mouth and his stomach convulses and spasms against the _heat_ and he can't breathe and he's screaming until—

Until suddenly he isn't anymore. He's on a hilltop, surrounded by nothing but blue skies and soft, green grass. He is lying on his back, staring up at the sun. It's warm against his face and there's a gentle breeze that occasionally lifts his hair back from his face.

There's a hand on his left shoulder and he looks up to see the boy is there again, sitting beside him. He doesn't belong here somehow—he doesn't belong anywhere near Erik. He's too happy, too _whole_. His head is tilted back, his face turned innocently toward the sun, his eyes shut. Erik wonders how old he is, because he seems to sort of _shift_ : one second he is barely ten years old, next he seems almost as old as Erik. (Erik would say older, but something tells him the boy only _looks_ older, his face prematurely aged from life and Erik's always looked a little young for his age anyway.)

 _Just breathe,_ the boy says, without opening his lips or looking at Erik. _Just take in the day._

The grass moves in the breeze and there's now a wild-looking forest to Erik's right that he doesn't remember being there before. He moves to sit up and the boy doesn't stop him, just keeps his hand on Erik's shoulder as he opens his eyes.

They're so blue Erik almost forgets to breathe.

 _It's nice here, isn't it?_ The boy smiles at him and Erik realizes that he's no longer wearing his clothes from the camp. Instead, he's got a white button up with the sleeves rolled back, khaki pants and loafers: the sort of clothes he used to wear in Israel.

The boy's clothes are simultaneously much more normal and much stranger than Erik's. The collar of his blue shirt is crooked and sloppy-looking and his grey wool trousers are worn in odd places and are horribly creased. He's wearing a navy blue jumper which has patches at the elbows. It's got plenty of other holes besides and Erik finds himself staring at the loose threads from the ribbed cuff and the boy's long fingers and his clean, well-polished nails.

 _You have a great many nightmares, my friend_.

Erik looks up at the boy's face, but his expression isn't one of pity or even of mild concern. He just looks... understanding.

The blades of grass poke against Erik's legs. “Who are you?”

The boy smiles and looks back up at the sky, his eyes bluer than anything he sees. _I am your friend. I want to help._

“Why?”

There's a moment—the air chills as a cloud passes over the sun and the boy's eyes seem to slide out of focus.

_Because you're lonely like me._

Erik doesn't argue with this, but reaches out to touch the boy's face. His cheeks are smooth and soft—there are no scars, only a few pale freckles.

_Schmidt isn't real anymore, you know. He's no more real than any of this. You're free to live your life now._

Erik knows, somehow, that he can't hide anything from the boy, so he speaks his mind.

“I have no life left to live.”

The boy smiles suddenly and, for a second, he's brighter than the sun. And then he's on his feet in front of Erik, his blue eyes shining. He's impish and beautiful in a way Erik doesn't really understand as he puts out a hand toward him.

_Then let's make one together._

Erik wakes up to the scent of dust and stale cigarette smoke.

 

***

 

The nurse comes in that morning and finds him in his wheelchair. Normally, Charles would get into bed an hour or two before she arrives, so it would seem like he spent the night there, but he doesn't wake up from Erik's dream until it's already too late. She's aggravated, he can feel it. Today is supposed to be one of his days at the university, but she won't let him go.

“You need to lay down,” she says, slipping a needle into the inside of his elbow. “You'll not like what happens when you spend too long in that chair.”

As if he doesn't know. He's been in a wheelchair for almost fifteen years and he knows the truth: sores from the chair are better than lying in bed with no chance of escape. There are straps on his bed, undone and lying to the side, tucked slightly underneath so they're not too visible at first. Of course, they aren't usually used—the nurse suffices herself with just placing his chair in the main room until he's allowed up again—but they're _there_ and he knows why. He can remember when they had to strap him down at the asylum, when they injected poisons into him until he became the _thing_ he is now.

He can't spend the day in bed with all that _noise_. He can't. He can't.

The nurse removes the needle and something snaps inside him.

Next thing he knows, he's out of the chair, clawing at the nurse with chewed up nails, his screams wrenching from his throat. He can't spend the day trapped in bed. He won't. She's scared and fear rolls off her in waves and Charles just wants it _off_.

A doctor, who has been waiting in the hall (Charles knew about him, of course. He could feel him there, can feel him there every time the nurse comes round: _why_ do they still think they can trick him like this?), rushes in. His mind is alive with panic that only spurs Charles further into frenzy, lashing out at anything he can reach. He can't feel where his thoughts end and theirs begin and it's all becoming a mess.

He manages to break their grips on him and, suddenly, he's free.

And, for that single second, he thinks he can run again.

But then his chin smashes against the floor, splinters scraping him. He's never had very good reflexes, but he manages to bring his hands out soon enough to stop himself going completely face-down. A few moments later, he's strapped to the bed, still thrashing as much as he can, and the doctor is giving him a jab.

And then there's silence.

The funny thing is that no matter how much he wishes for silence, prays for it—just something to stop all the noise—he's never been able to deal with silence; complete, absolute, crushing _silence_. They once managed to create a room for him that blocked everything—the voices, his own traveling thoughts—but he screamed and screamed until they let him out. The silence was more maddening than noise, which seems strange to him because everyone else in the world (unless there are others like him and he hopes there are) lives with that silence each day. He can't understand how he's different, _why_ he's different, why he can't be like them.

He thinks of Erik, of his fractured mind full of violence and snow, and finds comfort.

When he reopens his eyes, the light that enters the window is pink and highlights the uneven, cracked plaster of his ceiling. The doctor and the nurse are together in the next room and they're talking about him and they've found all of the food and—

 _No_. No. They want to take him back to the asylum. No. No. No. He can't go back there, he can't go back there after what he's managed to accomplish.

_Just forget about the food. Just forget. Forget._

And they do. A few moments later, the nurse comes in and unstraps him from the bed, but the wheelchair is still in the next room, so he can't leave.

Charles watches her go and allows his mind to wander.

 

***

 

Raven doesn't completely remember how she met Hank. Well, actually, she does, but she doesn't remember how an awkward introduction at an equally awkward social event turned into her closest friendship.

She doesn't doubt Hank could pin point the exact second of change, but he's a little odd that way.

They first met at her mother's women's club. Hank wasn't anyone's child there, wasn't dragged along and forced to socialize. He was a student—and not just any kind of student, a _university_ student.

And he was only fourteen.

Raven, who was just fifteen at the time, was the only person there who tried to talk to him. The women from the club talked _about_ him—how Mrs. Hawthorn was sponsoring his studies at Harvard, how he had graduated high school at twelve, how his professors said he could change the world of physics as they knew it—but most of those present just gazed blankly at him, their expressions ones of practiced interest.

So Raven sat down beside him and asked him what exactly he was studying. He muttered something incoherent. She nodded as though she understood and asked what university was like.

Now, almost nine years later, Raven watches Hank pull up on the gravel path in front of the manor, his rusted Oldsmobile perfectly out of place with its surroundings, and climb out of the driver's side. He's tall and gangly and Raven leans her head against the door frame, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Her heart feels a little light as he catches her eye and grins that awkward, slanted grin of his.

Hank is “gifted” like she is, though he doesn't think so.

Hank is also kind of stupid about some things.

She steps forward onto the brick path and, before she knows it, she's been pulled into a tight embrace.

There's something special about Hank's hugs. He has long, thin arms that wrap around tight like wire and hands that grip one into place, like the pull-down bar on a roller coaster. He hugs tightly, but nervously, like he's afraid of accidentally hurting the other person. Since he's invariably taller than whoever he's hugging, he sort of ends up folding his torso over, creating an extra angle of the embrace.

He presses his chin against her shoulder and she buries her face in his collar bone, her guard momentarily cracked.

“How are you doing?” he whispers and his breath feels hot against the side of her face. It reminds her of a lonely night three years before, when she gripped his hair and he pulled down on her waist, his breath hot and wet on her neck. She shivers as he pulls back and runs a hand through her hair. “You're alone right now, right? Why blonde?”

She blinks and tries to compose herself. “I thought I should try and look like mom for the funeral.”

“Which was a week ago,” he says and puts an arm around her shoulder. “Sounds like we need to do some drinking.”

“What else would I call you for?” She asks and wonders for a moment if he can tell that she hasn't slept in over a week.

They go into the parlor where Raven's life was truly defined and she is finding it very hard to breathe. Her hands shake so hard she ends up fumbling the keys about three times in her attempt to unlock the liquor cabinet, until Hanks moves in from behind, gently slipping the key ring from her fingers. She leans back against him as he opens the heavy wooden doors.

He pulls out a bottle of bourbon and two small glasses before moving toward the sofa. “You know, it's only one in the afternoon. You're a horrible influence.”

She laughs and sits down next to him. “But you need one in your life.”

He laughs too and hands her a glass.

She's grateful for Hank, more grateful than words can describe. He's helped her through a lot of ups and downs—from her first big break up to her graduation from NYU. She's been there for him too, ready to hold his hand when his dad fell into a coma, there to cheer when he received his first PhD. And yet they've not spoken in four months, when the doctors explained that Sharon was nearing the end. If she knows Hank—and she does, much better than he would like to admit—he's been tearing his hair out in worry, waiting for her.

He came to funeral, but she avoided him. She didn't know how to talk about it.

She doesn't know how to talk about it.

Four hours later, they're curled up together, toward the drunker end of tipsy, and staring at the screen that covers the empty fireplace for spring and summer. It's red and embroidered with burgundy thread, the same as the heavy curtains that cover the windows.

Raven makes a humming noise as she leans further into Hank's shoulder and the words that she's been meaning to say to him finally seem to slip from her lips.

“I have a brother, you know,” she says, closing her mouth on some of the fabric of his shirt. She's blue again and Hank keeps tracing the patterns on the back of her hands.

“I thought I was your brother,” says Hank, playing with her fingers. “Isn't that what we decided once?”

“Siblings don't do what we did.”

Hank glances up toward her face, his cheeks a little flushed. She looks away, because she can't bear to see the way his eyes glaze over for a second, his expression unreadable.

“So who's your brother? Wait a minute—are we counting Cain? Because his dad and your mom never even got properly married, thank God.” He pours himself another glass and Raven isn't even sure what they're drinking now. “That tool—” He cuts himself off, drink spilling over the table and his cheeks scarlet. “I mean—oh shit—I mean—ah!”

But Raven's laughing so hard she can hardly breathe and Hank falls into it as well, his eyes squeezed shut in embarrassment as he laughs uncontrollably.

When she finally recovers herself, she says, “I don't mean Cain, but thank you for reminding me of that horrible affair.”

“Didn't you put rotten eggs under the clutch in Kurt's car?” She nods and he knocks back a drink. “That was inspired.”

“I've very proud of it still,” she says as he refills both their glasses.

“So who are we talking about?”

“You remember that one picture you were always asking me about—the one of Sharon and—”

“Wait, are we talking about Charles?” asks Hank, looking much more confused. “I thought he was dead. You said he was—remember? After that time when Sharon kept talking about how he was going to be home for tea or something?”

“He's not.”

“Where is he, then?”

“An asylum—in England, I think.”

Hank swallows, but makes a sort of choking noise. “He's a lunatic?”

“I guess.”

There's a pause. Raven takes the bottle from Hank and pours herself another.

“What are you going to do?” he asks after a few moments.

She takes a deep breath through her nose before taking the shot. “Mom... wrote him a letter, apparently, before she died. I'm—I'm going to deliver it.”

She can't look at him, but she feels his fingers once again tracing the pattern of her scales. “I should go with you.”

Raven shakes her head and stares hard at the embroidered screen. Hank wraps his arm around her shoulders and her vision blurs for a moment.

“I'm here for you, Raven.”

She blinks and finds she can finally look at him. He looks worried—but he always looks worried. She can remember the way his brow had creased as she kissed down his stomach, as though concerned for her sanity. Worrying is just part of Hank. She knows that.

She knows him far too well.

“I want...” She pauses and grips his hand before she can continue. “I want to go by myself, but can you... I mean, can you handle everything around here?”

Hank smiles weakly, glasses sitting crooked on his nose, his sandy hair rumpled looking. “Sure thing.”

“Thank you.” The words come out as almost a whisper as she cuddles close to him, listening to his steady heartbeat through his clothes. She feels him press a kiss to the top of her head and smiles before she can help it.

They've been closer than this once, but they've never spoken of it since.

She misses it.

 

***

 

Erik barely even gets up the next day. He leaves the flat once to buy a loaf of bread and a couple packs of cigarettes and then returns, locking the door promptly behind him without touching the key. He lies on the dirty mattress and smokes, staring at the faded, slightly mildewed wallpaper and the puffs of smoke that fill the air. On occasion—out of habit more than actual suspicion—he reaches out with his power to ensure that there isn't any metal of _certain_ shapes. And there's none. Not even a penknife or a corkscrew.

(Erik killed a man with a corkscrew once. He drove it straight through the man's head, using his ability as well as brute strength to send it through.)

He's pretty sure he's found the most boring area of London in existence and he can't help but be a little glad. He's not sure what he would do if anyone were after him but try to kill them, and he can't seem to kill anymore. That's why he's been allowed to leave Mossad, because what use is an agent who can't kill?

What use is he to anyone?

He imagines Magda's face in the curls of cigarette smoke, the way she looked as she lined up a shot—her eyes over-focused, her jaw clenched, her shoulders tensed, her whole body coiled up like a spring. She opens her mouth to speak and says:

“ _Kleiner Erik Lehnsherr_.”

There's a second where the world is dark and everything is jumbled and he can't see and hands claw at him, ripping everything away until he is nothing but—

_Have you ever heard the phrase “When God closes a door, He opens a window?”_

He is sitting cross-legged on the floor of a dark room, just beside a flickering fire. In the dim light, Erik can see unfamiliar faces in unfamiliar portraits staring down at him from gilt frames. The room is paneled with wood and there are large, hulking shapes positioned at intervals that Erik realizes are furniture, covered to keep off dust. He is sitting on a rug that he's sure costs more than anything he's ever owned in his entire life. There seems to be singing coming from somewhere, but it's faint. A chandelier glints from the high ceiling. The space is warm, but too large, oddly blown out of proportion like...

Like a dream.

He looks at the boy in front of him, who is sitting in a position identical to Erik's. He's still wearing his wrinkly clothes and ratty jumper (no shoes though), but Erik's clothes have changed. He's wearing dark wool trousers, neatly pressed and held up with braces. The collar of his cream shirt feels a little over-starched against his neck. On his feet are a pair of slightly worn, black lace-ups. He stares at his cufflinks for a moment (silver, with a single gold stud placed in the middle) before understanding strikes him.

These are his father's clothes.

The boy is looking at him with eyes that are almost transparent in the firelight. His features are soft and pale, his eyes encircled with dark lashes, his lips red, but Erik can see that his hands are trembling, despite the warmth of the room.

“What did you say?”

_I asked if you knew the phrase “When God closes a door, He opens a window.”_

Erik nods, but it feels like something is being torn from his chest. He stares into the fire, watching the hot ash sparkle like freshly fallen snow. The boy says nothing, but when Erik looks up again, he's staring at him, blue eyes bright with... interest? Inspiration? Erik can't tell.

_I believe in that saying, you know._

Erik finds himself giving a derisive laugh. “I don't. I can't.”

 _Why?_ The intensity of the boy's gaze reminds Erik of Magda's expression as she puts on her uniform, every motion exact and perfect—no spare movement whatsoever.

He takes a deep breath. His eyes feel hot and there's a lump in his throat.

“Because—” he starts, but he has to pause to swallow. He meets the boy's gaze as directly as he can, wanting to push through each emotion. “Because God opened a window for me once when I thought I had nowhere to go. I passed through it and for a while I was free, and then walls grew up around me and He imprisoned me. There is no escape.”

The boy pauses, looking at Erik. There's a moment that seems to stretch on for eternity where they simply stare at each other and Erik can count the freckles on the boy's nose, the lines in his lips, and he seems to be memorizing Erik in return.

And then Erik is standing, cold and alone, his feet bleeding onto the snow. He can smell it—the bodies that burn in the ovens, coming out as smoke from the chimneys. They are burning and they are free, but he is trapped and freezing.

Hell must be cold, he realizes, as cold as this.

He must be in Hell.

 _Find the window_ , whispers a voice inside his mind.

His mother is lying on the floor, dead, dead, dead dead dead—

Erik wakes up screaming.

There is a moment, as he stares up again at the ceiling, his heart pounding in his ears, where he wonders how to move. Tears drip down onto the gritty mattress. He sits up slowly, but every joint aches as though he's just been running. He rises to his feet and moves toward the basin and toilet, separated from the rest of the room by a thin screen.

The cold water wakes him a little, grounds him, reminds him where he is.

He turns sharply—aware of movement in the next room. There's metal moving. He rushes out from behind the screen and freezes, his hand still gripping the frame.

A pen is floating in mid-air— _his_ pen—and he is acutely aware that _he_ is the one moving it. Or he should be. It's as though an area of his mind has been blocked off—he can't reach his powers and yet he _knows_ that he's the one using them.

The pen touches the faded, striped wallpaper and begins to write. The motion isn't smooth—it jerks and twitches. The lines it creates are shaky and awkward, its curves are pointed.

And then it drops to the ground, the metal of its casing glinting in the morning light, and Erik finds he can feel his powers again, like a light being switched on.

And on the wall are written the words: _FIND THE WINDOW_.

 

***

 

Sometimes, when the nurse runs the razor over his cheeks and along his jaw, Charles likes to close his eyes and pretend it's _him_ doing the shaving—standing before the mirror with a towel tossed over his shoulder, like he can still remember his father doing. It doesn't matter that his wrists are strapped to his chair, or that a thin circle of metal is locked over his brow (it keeps his thoughts _in—_ they don't want another “incident”), because he is escaping in his _mind_ , imagining another life for himself—the life he could've had, if only...

They don't make him wear it (they call it a “dampener” and it's not a bad description) all the time. Some of the doctors would prefer it: they don't trust him, they think his main goal is to send them to their deaths but it _isn't_. The other doctors—the smarter doctors—knows he's had trouble speaking since... ( _everything that happened_ ) what happened. They know how hard it is for him to form words, to speak long enough to express what he needs.

But precautions had to be taken after he forced a nurse—“With his mind! Only his mind! How incredible! How extraordinary!”—to take the razor from his cheek (she nicked the skin—he has a scar) and press it into his neck. It took him some time, slipping in the thoughts, making them take root until they were overflowing, bursting out of the corners her mind.

They barely got him in time. He still has the scar—thin and white, just under his jaw. It's proof—proof that he almost escaped once before.

He swallows and asks her the question he asks each nurse—there are several— _every time_ they come to shave him (every three days, starting at ten AM, once he's dressed and clean and hooked up to a fresh catheter, once he's seated properly in his chair and fed). He asks it when they're together in the cramped bathroom, after the razor's been set aside and they're toward the end of the routine.

It wouldn't be cramped if he could walk—if he could walk he wouldn't need their help, but they had to trap him, to lock him up inside a broken, broken body with his broken, broken mind.

“What do the doctors say now?”

She hesitates mid-motion, the towel in her hand hovering just inches from his face. He hopes, _prays_ she won't ask him to repeat it. (She's a new nurse—she's young and pretty and Charles wishes... He wanted to beg her not to look at him as she lifted him into the bath. He's too thin, too weak—his legs look horribly frail, left immobile for fifteen years. He didn't want her to see him.)

(He wanted her to push him down on the bed, her hands grasping where he can't feel; for her to kiss him and kiss him until he saw stars.)

He can feel her confusion from the question, her mind grappling for a response. He can tell from her thoughts that the other nurses, that the doctors, have warned her about this moment and, within seconds, her expression of shock changes to one of almost bittersweet kindness.

(He wants to smell her hair.)

“Nothing new yet, but they're looking into some new research. I'm sure we'll have you up and dancing in no time.”

She's lying. He knows she's lying. Why do they all think they can lie to him?

(He wonders if her breasts are soft like her voice. He's felt breasts before, through other people's minds, but he wonders how they would feel under his own fingers. He wonders how her areolar glands would feel under his lips.)

He sees through lies as easily as other men speak.

(He can imagine the way her breath would hitch as he kissed her neck, leaving bruises—the way her throat would feel with its ridges and valleys.)

He tries to smile at her as she slips the ring of metal from his brow, tries to smooth the feelings of distress she's been leaking from the moment she entered the flat. She's so pretty—with her thick auburn hair and pink lips.

They look so soft.

He makes a gesture to his temple and she nods, turning away to lock up the shaving kit (she's done it in the wrong order—they're supposed to put all that away before they take off the dampener, but he won't tell anyone, he'll keep her secret).

_Would you kiss me?_

She turns back around, her green eyes (a fascinating genetic combination, one of his favorites to study—so rare, so beautiful) wide.

“I... don't think that would be appropriate.”

He can feel the real reason in her thoughts, the feeling that resounds through his person. It cuts him, burns him, sears his mind.

He's too... _broken_ for her.

She pushes him into the main room and bends down to unbind his wrists, a few strands of hair coming loose from her ponytail.

He tries to swallow his pride.

_Please?_

She looks up at him and he can see himself through her eyes—small, pale and thin, his movements all jerky and uncoordinated. He sees the dark and reddish skin around his eyes, the scabbed and chapped lips. He sees his skinny knees and the way she has to lift him (how light he is). She sees the sloppy, almost childlike writing that covers his notes. She sees a man who could've been so many things...

If only...

She bites her lower lip and smiles. “Alright.” She finishes unstrapping his wrists first, then rises, looking at him with a thoughtful expression.

_You could sit on my lap...?_

She smiles and she does—positioning herself sort of sideways across his legs, with her own hanging off to one side of his chair. Then she cups his cheek with her hands (there's a little perfume on her wrists—lavender, he thinks) and lifts his face as she bends forward.

Her skin is softer than he could've possibly imagined—like the feeling of warm sunshine on his face, like the feeling of fresh air on his skin. Her lips melt against his like a mouthful of chocolate mousse (he tasted some once, through the mind of someone else), her mouth collapsing easily at the slightest touch of his own. He feels as though the universe is expanding somewhere just below his ribs, filling him up from the inside. His nerves are on fire, his mind flooded with thoughts he can't seem to keep out, but he _doesn't mind_ , because she's _real_. His hands end up in her hair and it feels like silk under his fingers. He wants her there forever, to feel the simple press of her lips against his.

To have an _anchor_.

And then the moment ends.

She blushes a little as she stand back up, straightens out her crisp, dove-grey skirt and begins to pack up her things. He watches her, wanting to memorize the _feelings_ inside him right now, trying desperately to keep away from her mind (she's leaking _pity_ and he doesn't know what to do with that, because no one has offered him _pity_ , only empty apologizes and unfulfilled promises). He tries to close himself up inside his own mind, but it's like trying to block out the sun with a single hand—light spills through the cracks between his fingers.

When the door closes, he stares at it for a moment before turning to the window and making his way towards it.

He's been awake for one hundred and twenty hours—too busy investigating an idea discussed between himself and Professor O'Brien to sleep. He has hardly gotten to close his eyes and slides into bed each morning at half-past five, half an hour before the nurse comes. He'll be returning to the university tomorrow and he's almost finished with his notes (a potential experiment about the theoretical X-gene, as he and O'Brien call it).

He wants to see Erik again—wants to gaze on his mental projection, which looks simultaneously harder than steel and as brittle as bread crumbs. His features are sharp and pointed, his eyes pale and on occasion, parts of him simply _disappear_ , too shattered by memories of the past to remain in his mind. He wants to feel his mind, because it's _beautiful—_ more striking than sunlight, more breath-taking than a shot of whisky on a cold winter's night (he's felt it through someone else).

However, it's only ten forty-five in the morning and Erik won't be asleep for hours yet, so Charles wheels over to the desk that sits to one side of the room and resumes the work he left earlier that morning. He moves through the routine of the day (a different nurse comes that afternoon and that evening, he notices) and eventually the time comes when he decides to go to his bedroom, get in bed, close his eyes and...

There are screams all around him and he is being clawed at on all sides and there are hands _tearing him apart_ and a voice is screaming in his ears, inside his head—

 _I HATE YOU_.

 

***

 

Raven is called by the lawyer's secretary two days later. Hank hasn't left the manor, sleeping in the bedroom that's unofficially his. It contains more of his possessions than his apartment (which is half an hour's walk from campus and exceptionally grimy considering how often Hank cleans. The wardrobe still holds the suit Sharon bought him when he escorted Raven to her “coming out” as a debutante. (“ _Honestly, if you're going to lead her out, you can't be wearing some dirty old sports coat and faded trousers! Have some bloody pride in my daughter!_ ”) It's too small for him now, but sometimes, when she's lonely, she'll slip into the room and hold the jacket to her nose, inhaling his scent.

He offers to go with her to visit the lawyer—he almost insists on it—but she declines easily, saying it probably has something to do with Charles.

“They won't let you in that meeting, but I'll tell you everything that happens when I get back.”

Hanks nods at this, but seems concerned. There was a time when Raven would've known how to change that, how to ease the crease between his eyebrows and make him laugh, how to make him forget all the little ways she was falling apart.

She doesn't really anymore.

She goes to the lawyer's office and is told by the secretary (who really ought to have a better job than this by now—she's more qualified than her boss) that MacLeod, the accountant, is there too.

Wonderful.

Raven enters and the lawyer looks up at her with a nervous, squirrely expression. “Miss Darkholme, how pleasant it is to see you again! I've contacted the institution where Mr. Xavier is currently residing—well, he's residing a little bit away, but that's not the point—and they said that you would be more than welcome to visit. However, they thought you should be informed of the extent of his... troubles.”

She raises one eyebrow at this euphemism, but says nothing. She can hear the _scritch_ of the accountant's pen as he makes his calculations, his face impassive.

When the lawyer doesn't continue, she says, “And these troubles are...?”

“Well, he...” The lawyer pauses, watching her face carefully before continuing. “From what they've told me, he has... um... he has... auditory hallucinations and several mental and physical disabilities, he's prone to suicidal and self-destructive behavior and... um...”

She stares at him, waiting. It feels like her heart has risen just a little too high within her chest.

The lawyer takes a deep breath. “He has violent fits, one of which resulted in the death of one of his doctors.”

She can't breathe, can't move. For a moment, she can see Sharon's face as she gazed at a small, black-and-white photograph of a young boy with a bright smile and a lot of freckles. She can see the way her face would crumple a little as she ran her hand down the edge of the frame, tears swimming in her eyes.

“ _Isn't he a beautiful boy? Isn't my darling Charlie beautiful? And so bright too. We found him sitting with one of his father's books when he was only three years old, sounding out the words to himself. It was almost bigger than he was, but he was reading it. Such a bright, bright boy..._ ”

How could—

“Miss Darkholme, are you alright?”

Raven starts and realizes, with a hot rush of embarrassment, that she's crying. The lawyer hands her his handkerchief with an expression she doesn't like and doesn't want to think about.

“I'm sure your mother would understand if you can't... We can just send the letter—”

“No!” she snaps and she isn't quite sure why, but her heart, which felt frozen just a few moments before, is suddenly beating twice as fast as normal. “No. I... I need to take it to him. I need to see my brother.”

“Speaking of your...  _brother_ ,” says the accountant, leaning towards her. She sort of wants to hit him. “Are you aware that we could easily stop paying for his care at the present time?”

“Excuse me?” she asks and it sounds weaker than it should. The accountant seems to think she cares about anything he has to say and continues a bit more rapidly.

“I've been looking at the numbers and the paperwork. Apparently, Mr. Xavier has a position at Oxford University researching with a Professor Nathan O'Brien. He holds a number of honorary degrees in genetics and biology and he actually makes enough money with his position to pay for himself. Look.” He pushes a sheet of paper across the table.

Raven's never been bad with numbers, but her vision is still blurry and her mind still scrambled and so she just stares down at the paper and then back up at him. “What?”

He smirks and she finds her hands curling into fists. “You could be saving thousands of dollars each year—each  _month_ even.”

“I—” She's thoroughly thrown. She wishes Hank had come with her. “I don't care. Why... Why would I  _care_ about something like that?” Her anger is rising and she knows she should try to calm down, but she can't seem to. She's furious, indignant. “We're not  _bankrupt_ , are we? Why would I think a few thousand is more important than  _my_ brother getting the care  _he_ needs? What is  _wrong_ with you?”

She can't remember when she stood, but she's now above the accountant and the lawyer. The latter is trying to avoid her gaze, but the former stares her calmly, his gray eyes cold behind his glasses.

“You'd rather be cheated out of your money than do the smart thing and let your brother fend for himself?”

She almost shouts. She almost smashes his stupid little glasses into his face. She almost flips over the desk. She almost turns blue, just to make them jump and feel uncomfortable and wonder once more  _what she is_ .

But she doesn't. She takes a deep breath through her nose and raises her chin and knows, that at that moment, she truly is the daughter of Sharon Xavier.

“I'd rather be a decent human being, Mr. MacLeod, and help my brother than become cold and hard and venal.” She doesn't say  _like you_ , but it hangs in the air between them. She turns to the lawyer. “Do you have anything else you wish to say, Mr. Norland?” He shakes his head and she smiles. “Then I wish you both a good day. I trust you've already reserved those plane tickets for me?”

She pulls over onto the side of the road about an hour away from the manor and finally lets it all sink in.

Her brother—Charles, who she's heard spoken of with fondness, with sadness, with absolute and complete regret—her last hope at  _something—_ has killed a man.

For the first time, Raven is glad that Sharon's dead, just so she doesn't have to feel what Raven's feeling now.

She clutches the steering wheel, staring at her knuckles as they turn whiter and whiter beneath her pale skin. Her whole body trembles and she viciously bites her lower lip, trying to untangle the emotions that are flooding her system.

She breaks down in the driver's seat and cries to herself for a long time before continuing the long drive to Xavier Manor.

That night, she lies awake. She didn't tell Hank about what she's been told. She doesn't know what he would say, but she gets the feeling it would be something to the effect of “I'm coming with you to see him and that's it” and she doesn't want that. She wants to do this by herself.

The silk wallpaper of her room shines in the moonlight that slides through her window. It's a warm night. They're just on the brink of summer and she likes to pretend that the flowers around the manor will be just as bright as the ones on her wallpaper. In reality, they'll wither from heat and grow dull and crushed.

Raven, against all better judgment and knowledge of logic and biology, finds it difficult to believe they'll bloom next spring. They were Sharon's flowers, chosen by her, touched by her. It seems strange to think that they'll live without her.

The flowers in the wallpaper are ever-blooming, forever bright, forever shining and beautiful.

Raven lies there until the clock on the mantel strikes five and the moonlight from her window is becoming replaced with thin, dawn sunshine and then she gives up. Sliding out of bed, she puts on her slippers and heads out into the hallway, thinking of making her way down to the kitchen. She's almost at the stairs when her eyes fall on a small, crescent-shaped dent in the wood paneling, a tiny interruption in an otherwise neat geometric pattern.

She can remember the day she first noticed that dent. She was nine years old and was traversing the house with her eyes tightly shut. It was a contingency plan—to see if she could still move about the house if she were to lose her sight. Her fingertips caught suddenly against the wood and she opened her eyes to examine what she had felt.

It wasn't a very deep mark—it looked like someone had kicked the wood and the heel of their shoe had left a dent. She touched it, suddenly deeply curious.

“Raven, what are you doing?”

She turned around to see Sharon standing behind her, her fingers fumbling with one of her pearl-drop earrings. Her silk robe hung loose over her night gown and Raven found herself momentarily distracted by the image of a geisha by the hem, her face painted white, her hair jet black.

“What's this from?” Raven asked, her fingers still touching the dent. Sharon bent down next to her, examining the mark for herself.

“That must've been from Charles. He was so upset when he had to be confined to his room. The doctors had to pull him in.” Her gaze traveled upward to the door beside them. Raven looked too. Perhaps it was her imagination, but the knob—brass and identical to all the others on the floor—seemed to glint brightly, it's shadows intensified by the unstoppable tarnish that spread up from the base.

Sharon rose to her feet and touched the door, her other hand drifting back a little. Raven knew Sharon was thinking of the four rings of keys that hung in her room, (the room was locked, of course—Raven tried it later) but her expression was distant, her motions hesitant.

“But we oughtn't go in there,” Sharon whispered, her head tilted in such a way that Raven could no longer see her face. “You never know... You never know what ghosts you might wake up.”

It takes Raven fumbling for several minutes with different keys to find the right one. Sharon had them all memorized, but Raven hasn't reached that point yet. A series of emotions flash through her system, one after another—sadness and anger and nervousness and a thousand others. She opens the door.

Dust lies like frost over the room. The bed (which, she notes, is child-sized) is still made, the covers flipped back and the pillows plump. A teddy bear sits on the bed, its fur thick with dust. The shutters are closed outside the windows, but dark blue curtains still hang inside the room, bleached in stripes from the light that still slips in through the cracks in the wood. There's a small desk and chair next to the window, too small for any adult to seat themselves comfortably. A stack of books sits on the dusty surface and she sees the title  _Alice in Wonderland_ on top of the pile.

It's a child's room, but it's cold and empty.

It's a crypt.

Raven runs a finger over the dusty footboard and breathes deeply, imagining... something. She sinks down on the bed and tries to close her eyes, but all she can see when she does are old, faded photographs of a boy who became a murderer. Clouds of dust rise up from the duvet. She watches them float in the air, aware that she's crying again, though she doesn't remember when exactly that happened.

The teddy bear stares at her with dusty glass eyes.

She doesn't move for a long time.


	2. And this is where the rhythm changes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very sorry for the long wait! Hopefully this is worth it. Thank you all so much for the lovely comments and kudos and bookmarks. I really appreciate it.  
> Special thanks to Wanderer (Straggler) for all her fantastic feedback. This chapter wouldn't be what it is without her.

>        _The Rainbow comes and goes,_
> 
> _And lovely is the Rose,_
> 
> _The Moon doth with delight_
> 
> _Look round her when the heavens are bare,_
> 
> _Waters on a starry night_
> 
> _Are beautiful and fair;_
> 
> _The sunshine is a glorious birth;_
> 
> _But yet I know, where’er I go,_
> 
> _That there hath past away a glory from the earth._
> 
> \- William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” (lines 10-18).

 

Raven's fingertips brush the covers of the books, the dust catching on her skin. She imagines for a moment if Charles had stayed at Westchester. She imagines slipping into his room on warm summer afternoons and reading those books to him. She imagines that they would've whispered secrets to each other. Maybe his gaze would slide out of focus from time to time like Sharon's did. Maybe he would sometimes grasp her hand with tears in his eyes, his lips twisted with emotions she couldn't understand and would never feel.

But then she would shift from shape to shape—from person to person—and he would laugh like Sharon did, his eyes lighting up with his smile. She would make him laugh, the boy who would become a murderer. Maybe they would've been the best of friends, sneaking out of bed for midnight snacks. They would have befriended Hank together, the three of them running off to have adventures in the collection of trees that encircled the manor.

And Sharon would watch them through the windows of the sitting room and smile and laugh.

 

***

 

 _Find the window_ .

Erik wakes up every morning to those words, etched into the wall across from his bed.

They make no sense.

He understands what they  _mean_ , but he doesn't know how to follow them. There is no escape from his mind—it is his prison, his  _life_ is his prison, the world is his cell.

God is his gaoler.

The boy has not appeared for five nights and Erik has been left alone to drown in his nightmares. He dreams each night of Schmidt and wakes each morning screaming, the way he used to right after the camps. He almost stopped—he almost left the screaming behind. But now it's getting worse: he drowns in his own cries each night, drowns in his nightmares where he shouts for help, but no one hears.

Because he is not human. He is vermin. He is a blight on the earth.

Erik's beginning to wonder if the boy exists at all, if he isn't just some figment of Erik's exhausted, fractured mind. He wonders is he is becoming like those men he knew in Israel—so damaged by all he's seen and experienced that his thoughts are collapsing, burning, becoming nothing but ragged cloth, shredded by the wind. The boy seemed so real, so independent, so  _different_ from anyone Erik knew... Those words seemed real as they scrawled themselves on the wall. The boy was brighter than sunlight, full of the sort of energy Erik hasn't seen since he was a child, running through the streets with his little gang of friends. And yet, while he seems to be overflowing with life, there's something hollow about him, a sadness lurking just beneath the surface that eats away at the bones.

Erik thinks he and the boy could be... special.

Erik thinks a lot of stupid things.

He leaves the flat less and less, subsisting on cigarettes, tap water and bread. He smokes all day and stares at the swirls of smoke that fill the air, trying not to think about anything. He can't bear to face the world. There are people, he sees them, but he is separate from them, trapped in his prison.

He can still remember remember how he felt in Israel—how it felt to be almost human, how it felt to laugh and smile, how it felt to hold Magda in his arms.

But he isn't human now. He's a monster—he is like Frankenstein's daemon, left alone after the death of his creator, with only one escape.

Death.

He sits in the corner of the room and smokes, his head leaned back against against those  _mocking_ words. He stares at the end of his cigarette, at how it glows and burns further and further down, closer and closer to his fingers, like a fuse—

His head  _burns_ and he is choking on liquid flames. Schmidt is suffocating him, his hands pressed over Erik's nose. Tears fall from his eyes as his head hits the wall.

His head hits the wall.

His head hits the wall.

“ _Bitte_ .”

There is snow all around him—stained with blood and rust—but he is being  _eaten_ by flames than burn through his stomach and he just needs to  _get out_ .

And then he feels it, like a gentle breeze against his face, like a whisper in the dark, like the movement of distant metal.

And he attacks the intruder.

There's a jumble of pain and  _ripping everything_ and screaming and anguish and  _joy_ and noise—horrible, horrible noise from every direction—thousands and millions of voices, crying, shouting, laughing,  _living_ .

He is naked and bleeding, standing alone on the grass in the middle of a small, walled garden. His insides are still burning and he vomits, choking a little as he does. It glows against the grass, smoking and fizzing. Tears drip from his nose and he can feel the grit of concrete against his cheek as he looks around, searching for the intruder. He's still there, somewhere, lighting up the back of Erik's mind.

And, suddenly, there he is, standing just a little ways away. He has one hand pressed against one of the fruit trees that grows out of the lawn. His dark hair shines in the sunshine, his cheeks a little pink. His eyes are bright and he's trembling, wavering a little where he stands.

_Do you want me to leave?_ His expression is guarded, but seems to project an air of false innocence. Erik knows it's false and it's driving him mad. His thoughts  _scream_ through his mind, jumbling together with Schmidt's smile and Schmidt's hands and Magda's voice as she sings prayers over and over in the cold night. The world seems to be tipping and turning.

_Calm your mind._ The boy's expression is slightly pained and Erik feels... something.

“Who are you?” he asks. “What do you want with me?”

The boy looks confused, as though he doesn't understand the question. He still looks nervous, but no less intense. Inspiration seems to burn inside him, coming out like rays of sunlight. His hand grips the narrow trunk of the tree.  _Why?_

Erik's mind boils with frustration and anger and fear and  _why are you here?_ and he finds he wants to press kisses into the soft skin just under the boy's jaw. He takes a step forward, vibrating with anger, and the boy moves back a little, his nostrils flaring.

“I need to know—” (he almost says  _if you're real_ , but stops himself—he won't get a real answer in any case.) “—what you want from me.”

_I only want to help you_ .

Erik  _roars_ and the dream flies apart.

And it's  _his_ now, because they're in Schmidt's office. Blood is everywhere and there are men around the room, staring as he slams the boy down against the floor from where he is strapped against the opposite wall and Schmidt is laughing as he beats the boy into the ground just as he beat 313784 (July 15 th , 1944—he knows the exact day and anyone who pretends that pain blurs such things is lying, in his opinion), enormous hunks of metal flying toward the boy. He opens his mouth in a silent scream, tears pouring from those blue, blue eyes as the iron rod smashes against his ribs.

This boy doesn't want to  _help_ him. He doesn't  _want_ Erik. He's just another person who wants to torment him, to tease the vermin, to torture it. He wants to mock Erik with half-riddles and dreams, to make Erik look again at 313784's dark brown eyes as the life fades behind them, at the blood that mats his curly hair, at the way his hands twitch one last time as he dies.

Erik cries out as Schmidt runs the cool, ceramic blade over his skin, and the dream shatters again.

They're in a dark corridor now. The floor is uneven, as though warped from water damage, and the pale blue plaster of the walls is cracked and old. The lights flicker dimly at the far end of the hall and the corners where the walls meet the floor are hidden in shadow.

The boy is standing in front of Erik, shaking, but his chin is held high and his hands are clenched in loose fists. Erik wants to rip him apart.

“You don't want to  _help_ me!” shouts Erik and the boy flinches, shaking a little harder. He's like a dog, pressed into a corner. Erik advances and the boy moves back, still trying to keep a brave face, but it's breaking. “You want to play with me—tease me. You mock me with riddles and commands. You don't want to  _help_ . You want to  _play_ .” The boy's back is against the wall and he looks frantic, scared.

Erik knows that face—he's worn it many times himself.

_You're wrong_ .

The words are strong, echoing through Erik's mind long after they're sent out.  _I care very much about you. I do want to help._

Erik glares down at him and he notices that the boy is much paler than he was at the beginning. The skin under his eyes is darker, his face more lined. He has no freckles.

But his eyes are still blue—bluer than anything Erik has ever seen.

_I know I've not been able to see you for several days. I'm sorry. But just let me explain things to you, please._

Erik hesitates and nods, backing away enough for the boy to slip down into a sitting position. He joins him on the floor, which is rough and unsanded. The boy draws his feet up so he's sitting cross-legged. Erik simply watches him, waiting.

_My name is Charles,_ says the boy. He's still trembling, his hands clutched together in his lap. His gaze is just as steady, though.  _I have powers, like you. I can read people's minds and communicate with them—telepathy._ He leans forward, seeming more confident from Erik's lack of interruptions.  _But I've never read a mind like yours before, Erik. It's truly beautiful. You're so powerful, so bright._ Emotions are flooding in with the words now, confused and tangled. Erik finds himself blinking back tears. The boy—Charles—seems to realize this and draws himself up, pulling back the emotions. He gives Erik a small smile.  _I only want you to be happy, Erik. That's all._

He doesn't remember doing it—he doesn't remember lifting his arm, reaching out toward Charles, but the boy doesn't hesitate to match his movement. Their fingertips touch...

And it feels like the hot winds in Israel.

Erik feels a tear fall down his cheek, hot and thick. “I don't think I can be.”

Charles smiles at him, his eyes lighting up. He's not shaking now and the color is returning to his cheeks.

_Oh, my friend._ He presses his hand forward, so it rests fully against Erik's, palm against palm.  _You could do so much—you could be so much more than what_ he _has tried to make you._

Erik shakes his head and looks down at the floor, tears spilling down his cheeks as Charles turns his hand, entwining his fingers with Erik's.

_I have an idea—a way to help you._

“There isn't any help.”

_But there is. It's all very simple._

Erik stares at their hands, as his own rough, scarred skin and at the boy's smooth, pale fingers, at his long fingernails. He can see the freckles on Charles' nose, his smooth, red lips.

For a second, Erik imagines leaning forward to kiss him, how his lips would taste under his own. He imagines the soft moaning noises that would come from Charles' throat. He imagines the way Charles would dig his fingers into the back of Erik's neck, the way he would melt against him, the way he would laugh as Erik kissed down his neck to the hollow of his collarbone.

He blinks and it's gone. He looks back at Charles, at his bright eyes.

“What's your idea?”

Charles smiles again and squeezes Erik's hand.

_It's very easy. We just have to kill Klaus Schmidt._

Erik snaps awake, the words still hanging above his head.

_Find the window._

 

***

 

The odd thing is that while not one of the doctors or nurses trusts him, Charles has never even thought of harming them. (Not for long anyway. Not for long enough to do anything.) He knows that they don't mean to do what they do—they don't understand that he's just as human as they are, that he feels pain just as they do, that he could love as much as them.

Maybe he could love more—he has no way of knowing.

He's never tried to hurt any of them. Of course, there was Dr. Essex, but that was different. He was a monster; there had been no other option. Charles tried to find one, sat awake many nights in his old room (it was a cell. He doesn't know why his mind still tries to insist it was a room. It was a cell, with bars on the window and concrete walls and a heavy door that locked each night.). Isabella's thoughts would tear at his own as he struggled to find another solution, but there weren't any.

It's sort of funny that, despite everything, Charles can't bring himself to regret or repent for anything he did.

It's because he can still hear Isabella's thoughts, her screams as Dr. Essex strapped her down, as he did unspeakable things, as he slowly destroyed every part of her—her body... her mind... He cut her apart and ripped her up and broke her and Charles... Charles could only reach into her mind and take her to his memories of sunny summer days before his father's death.

He and Isabella never really met—he never got to see her with his own eyes. But he knew her by her mind, by her bright and vivid thoughts, scenes of the futures that could be...

Should be...

And Dr. Essex was destroying her so he  _had to go_ . He performed experiments on Charles too, but he was older (he was thirteen, how old it seemed then) and he had been at the asylum longer than Isabella. He had been strapped to tables and electrocuted and had toxins injected into his veins to see how he reacted, but he could take it. He could do it. He would be fine one day (she told him so, once), but she wouldn't.

And then one night, Isabella stopped screaming and Charles couldn't find her mind. It was there, barely. He could feel the edges of her thoughts, but they weren't bright any more. They were broken, shattered, cut into pieces.

Dr. Essex had ruined her.

But maybe, maybe if Charles were allowed to take care of her, she would be alright. Maybe he could help her, maybe he could make her, if not the same as she'd been before, at least happy. He tried to comfort her through her thoughts, but they were confused, hard to understand, easily drowned out by all the other  _noise_ .

But one day, he heard a thought, a simple passing idea from Dr. Essex as he stood above him. He was going to kill Isabella. Destroying her hadn't been enough. He was going to kill her.

And so Charles did what he had to do. He had to protect Isabella and so he grasped at Dr. Essex's mind and ripped at it. It was greasy, oily, filthy, violent, disgusting. It was hell in a collection of cells, in a stream of chemical and electrical impulses.  _He_ was hell. Charles tore away at the filth, at the flames until there was nothing left, until he was broken, until they were broken. And he screamed, clutching at his scalp, digging his nails into the oily skin, ripping himself apart. And he screamed and wrenched at the leather straps that held him down. He would destroy him, he had to be destroyed.

And then Charles reached the center and there he planted a single thought.

_You don't belong here. You should go._

He left the room and Charles tried to find Isabella's mind, tried to tell her it would be alright.

Dr. Essex was found in his office a few hours later, his wrists slit. And Charles, feeling guilty and confused, confessed to what he had done. (How stupid of him, how foolish—he hadn't known—).

And Dr. Essex was the founder of the asylum, the noble, unquestioned leader, and Charles was the monster that made him kill himself.

There was only one option.

Charles stares at the food on the table. It's steaming. He's already had a bite and all he can smell are eggs and pepper and he wants to vomit. He takes the plate onto his lap, pushes the food into the bin and replaces the plate on the table. He wonders how knives feel.

His mind (in self-defense, he knows. He knows why his mind does everything) switches suddenly to Erik. They will kill Schmidt—they have to. Erik's sanity, such as it is, hinges on them killing his mental projection. It's as necessary as it was with Dr. Essex. Schmidt's had too much power in Erik's mind for too long. It won't be easy, but it has to be done.

Erik deserves happiness and freedom from the past. He deserves to move on and be with people, to touch them, hear them. He deserves to glory in their differences and in the common traits that tie them together.

He deserves everything Charles can't have.

But maybe... Maybe once Erik has found his happiness, once he's free, maybe then Charles can free himself. Maybe he could just let the nurse forget to put away the razor before she removes the “dampener”. Or maybe he could have her leave the kitchen unlocked or a window open (he's high enough that, if he positions himself correctly, the fall would be fatal).

There are limitless possibilities for death once you're looking for them.

He thinks of Isabella, of her bright, beautiful mind.

He thinks of knives.

 

***

 

Erik spends the day pacing the flat, suddenly aware of just how small it is. He goes back and forth, back and forth, the space shrinking, becoming monotonous, becoming dull.

The words are still on the wall, but they don't make him angry now. If anything, they excite him, his heartbeat speeding up each time he sees them. He smokes more frantically, willing the day to pass faster so he can sleep, so that he can feel that feather-light touch against his thoughts.

He lives in his dreams now.

He finds he doesn't mind that much.

The boy— _Charles—_ has a plan. He didn't say it—Erik awoke just as the idea slipped through his thoughts (ideas as words, very different from the ones etched into his wall)—but he knows it's something big, something better. He could sense it somehow, in the same way he can sense that Charles is real.

Erik finds that he trusts Charles because Charles is like Erik. He lives through dreams, shifts from boy to man, detached from reality, disconnected from the rest of the world. Erik wonders what Charles looks like in reality: he wonders if those freckles truly spread over the skin of his nose, like the stars in the Milky Way. He wonders if his eyes are that blue, if the radial muscles really twist in intricate patterns like waves on the ocean.

He wonders if Charles speaks in real life or if he is only a voice echoing through Erik's shattered mind.

Erik lies down barely half an hour after the sun sets and the couple across the street turn on their lights for the evening. He imagines he can hear them laughing, can feel them touching, can see the way the corners of her mouth twitch when she starts to laugh.

He is in Israel, in the room that was his and Magda's. The air is hot and close. The sound of two boys shouting on the street outside floats in through the open window. The rough muslin curtains glow in the evening light. The walls are painted bright turquoise. There is a cigarette hole in the sheets. The room is not big: it contains little besides a bed, two chairs and a stack of clothes.

But it is  _theirs—_ from the cracks in the plaster to the rough wooden floorboards.

Magda isn't there. He doesn't dream of Magda very much. He wants her to have peace and knows that there is none to be found in his mind.

But, then again, this isn't his dream.

Charles is sitting in one of the chairs. It's odd how much the name 'Charles' suits him. It's a soft-sounding name, like the curve of his nose or the edge of his lips—but there's a brightness, a sharpness hiding just beneath, glinting in his eyes, flashing behind the corners of his smile. He is not sweating from the heat, but his cheeks are a little flushed. His hair is thick and a little longer than Erik thinks usual for a man. It curls at the ends.

He wants to dig his fingers into that hair.

“Do you no longer wait for me to fall asleep?” he asks, raising one eyebrow.

Charles grins and Erik feels an odd burst of happiness.  _I'm afraid we have a lot to talk about and a lot to get done in one night. Hopefully, you'll feel very well-rested in the morning._

Erik snorts mentally, but for some reason, it's expressed as a shrug. Odd how things don't always match up in dreams.

“How do you know Schmidt?”

_Your mind._ The answer is simple, logical. Of course. How else would a boy like Charles know of Schmidt?

And yet...

“Then why do you wish to kill him?”

Charles pauses, a little thrown by the question. His hands don't shake as he runs his fingers through his hair—they are short and broad.

_I hold no grudge against Schmidt myself_ , says Charles and he doesn't seem like a boy anymore. He seems only a few years younger than Erik. He is a man, sitting in Erik's old room, his legs curled up under him.  _But I know you do and that it needs to be... resolved. And I can only think of one way to do that._

Erik doesn't remember Charles standing, but he is suddenly very close to him, just a little shorter, his pointed jaw raised towards Erik. The skin around his eyes is pink and blue, shadowed from time. The bright spark in his eye is stronger now and it's almost all Erik can see. His heartbeat is loud in his ears.

The radial muscles in Charles' eyes twist like piles of rope, strange, unreal shapes. They remind Erik of running water falling into a glass, the molecules spinning and flowing and moving...

He could move mountains with those eyes, Erik is sure.

Charles takes Erik's hand.  _Are you ready to try this?_

“Yes.”

And the world dissolves into half-melted snow under his feet, into the ache of never-rested muscles. There are bodies, stacked up on top of each other—starved, broken bodies, burning—and he can feel Magda as she clutches him in the dark, as they waited for it all to end—

But there is a hand holding his, a warm, soft hand. And there is Charles, bright against the icy pain of the rest of the dream. He keeps Erik upright, his presence warming Erik like sunshine.

_Where is Schmidt?_ he asks and his thought is somehow like a whisper.

His name is a burning hand on Erik's back, invasive fingers pressing into him. The concrete scrapes his cheek as he struggles, suffocating, and suddenly it's  _cold_ and it's  _cold_ and  _get it out get it out get—_

“ _Bitte._ ”

_Where is Schmidt?_

Erik can't speak. His mouth is full. He's choking and sobbing and he can't speak. There's a hand in his hair— _hot, burning_ —forcing him in, a knife against his neck, cool ceramic. And he knows what Charles can't understand—the flaw in the plan. He cannot kill Schmidt, he cannot find Schmidt for one every simple reason.

Schmidt is everywhere.

_No. No. Wake up, Erik. Wake up._

The drill cuts into his teeth and his mother is there, her hand tangled with his, trying to hold him close. Her hands were soft, but calloused. He can feel the bones of her knuckles, the bulges of her veins under her skin.

And there is Schmidt, smiling as he rips Erik apart, stripping away everything until he is nothing but bones and flesh.

For a moment, the world explodes in sunshine and he feels the press of a hand against his heart.

Erik wakes.

 

***

 

It begins with a headache.

It's just a slight pain above his right eyebrow—sharp and insistent, but mild enough that it can be ignored. (And Charles would ignore it no matter what. He doesn't want help. He doesn't want  _their_ help. He'll be beyond it soon.) He wakes up with it after that first disaster of a dream and it stays constant over the next few days.

He doesn't eat much—he can't seem to stomach much. (He can't eat. It doesn't work right. Other people eat. Other people live real lives with real people. Charles merely watches. He doesn't eat.) He read over the notes that O'Brien sends over for him and makes some of his own. He will have to go into the university in a couple of days. The nurse says it will be “fun”, getting out, getting fresh air, but Charles knows that the only time he'll spend outdoors is when he's being moved in and out of the car.

He knows the routine. It's clockwork.

Over the next two days, it becomes harder to focus—the ever-present headache boring its way into his skull. He considers sending himself out to the minds of those he can  _feel_ below in the street, but he finds he doesn't have the energy. His hands shake and he bites the ragged edges of his nails, just to have something to do while he waits for the nurse each evening, before they finally leave him for the night. (The nurses used to stay there all night, used to lift him into bed, until one day he begged the doctor to let him carry out his night routine alone, to let him have a little privacy, a little dignity.)

( _Please, just a little. Let me be a human being._ )

The headache doesn't fade (it's worse) and his exhaustion is worse.

He want Erik to know, tries to reassure him at the beginning of each dream and at the end, that he has done nothing wrong, that he doesn't not need to be sad or angry or to mourn anymore for those who have found their peace. He needs to allow himself to understand that Schmidt is only a man.

And now he is a dead man.

And, soon, he will be again.

And, after that, Charles and Erik will both be free.

Erik will have a beautiful life, Charles can see it in his mind—he doesn't trust people, but he  _cares_ for them; he doesn't express himself easily, but his mind is that of an artist's (probably a musician of some kind?). Erik will bring beauty to others and Charles will have helped in that and that's worth waiting just a little while longer.

That night, Charles eases himself into bed and closes his eyes reaching out until he finds...

_Erik._

 

***

 

Erik knows immediately that the dream is not his own. He can't tell precisely where they are—it reminds him a little of a cathedral with arena-style seats, but that doesn't make sense—but Schmidt isn't there, so it must be Charles.

“I'm sorry I haven't...” The apology feels foolish in his mouth, clumsy, unsuited for what he is speaking of. “I thought... I thought it would be easier.”

Charles smiles at him. Erik doesn't remember him being there, but there he is, smiling cheerfully, his nose crinkling a bit at the top as he does. His hair is thick and shining, his eyes sharp and bright, light by something deep inside that Erik doesn't understand and certainly does not possess.

_You needn't be sorry, Erik._ Erik is suddenly aware that the feel of Charles' thoughts, of his  _mind_ against his own are as soothing as the smell of Magda's perfume in the morning.  _It will get better. I'm here for you._

“Charles—” His voice cracks, shatters really and he struggles to keep it stronger. “I don't think I can do this.”

It feels like he's just ripped something from his chest and suddenly he  _can't_ . He can't keep watching it all. He can't keep trying. He can't keep remembering. He can't keep screaming. He can't keep seeing those words (There  _is_ no window, not for him. He is nothing and he has nothing). He can't...

He can't go on.

He's on his knees, his head clutched in his hands, his fingernails digging into his scalp. Hot tears fall from his face, burning little cigarette holes in the floor. He can't bear to go on. He thought... he almost thought...

He feels Charles' fingertips brush his forearm. Erik, for a split second, hears a song sung by a mother that is not his own, sung as she brushed her son's fever-soaked hair from his forehead, her voice low and sweet. He looks at Charles' face.

He's never seen a face that beautiful in the entire world.

_Please don't leave me_ . Erik doesn't say the words, but they echo through the air. Charles brings up his hand to touch Erik's face.

_I'll always be here._

There's something deep inside Erik—something created by the camps, but honed in Mossad—that tells him it's a lie, but he ignores the instinct. They have more important things to do and Charles' fingers are around Erik's hands once more.

It all falls apart—blood and snow and screams surround him. He can feel one of Schmidt's knives slicing him open, spreading him apart, until he's stretched out, never to be the same.

Ruined by Schmidt.

And yet, he is not frightened.

Hate pounds in Erik's skull, pushing out fear. It's as though a light has appeared in his mind, fueled by the feeling of Charles' hand in his. He is more powerful than he has ever been.

There is a gun in his hand. He raises it, looks into the face... Schmidt is smiling. He stares into Erik's eyes. His fingers are long.

Erik fires.

His mother drops to the floor.

He wakes up screaming.

 

***

 

The headache doesn't fade. It gets worse. It throbs and stabs and Charles can't seem to focus on anything for very long before it cuts through his mind. He spends a whole day staring, half-focused, out of the window of his apartment, allowing the noise from the street to wash over him: musings, worries, bits of jokes, memories of half-remembered mornings...

It's becoming harder not only to focus on activities. The world around him seems to be rapidly becoming blurrier. It takes more effort to bring things into relief and so he stops trying, because it's making his headache worse.

Why should he need to see, anyway? He doesn't do anything—he can't do anything. He's a broken shell, cracked and ruined.

His headache gets so bad that one morning he begs to stay  _in_ bed. It's a day that he's supposed to go to the university, but he can't stand the thought of being carried in and out of the car, of being stuck in the midst of so many stressed students (even though he and O'Brien work alone, thoughts creep in). He can't stand trying to focus at microscopic slides; he can barely see the pages of his books.

O'Brien comes to visit him that afternoon. His voice is soft, as always—his tanned skin creasing in smile-lines. His thoughts are like flannel sheets, warm around Charles' mind. His black hair, streaked with grey, stands up in curls around his head like a dark halo. He smiles at Charles the way he did when he first came to see him at the asylum, his thoughts just as kind.

O'Brien is unfailingly kind. He has never treated Charles as less, though he does pity him—he doesn't see Charles as lost potential, as irreparable. He sees Charles as something that others have broken, something that can be fixed.

Except he's wrong. Charles smiles back as O'Brien pushes his glasses higher up on his nose. They discuss the notes Charles has gathered, the thoughts of the nurse whispering from the sitting room. It's sort of... peaceful.

O'Brien's voice reminds Charles of the memories he still has of his father, of the feel of his mother's palm against his cheek. He's kind and he wants to give Charles an escape from his life. He's kind and he wants to help, but he can't. He lets Charles communicate with his mind, even though it's jarring to him. He tries to make Charles happy as much as he can.

His thoughts are warm and soft like his voice. Charles wishes he wouldn't leave.

O'Brien shakes Charles' hand when the nurse comes in and tells him that Charles has to eat his dinner. The creases around his eyes are sharper in the evening light, his dark eyes shining a little as he smiles at Charles one more time. It occurs to Charles that he may not see O'Brien again.

It should hurt a little.

The nurse stays until (she thinks) Charles has finished his dinner. She asks if he needs anything else and he shakes his head.

It's noisy once she goes. With no specific minds to drive himself into, the noise from outside is overwhelming. Noise, noise, noise...

He reaches out to Erik, but it's as though he's just out of reach, as though Charles' fingers are just brushing the edges of his thoughts. His head throbs. His eyes feel too big for their sockets. He finds himself sobbing, his chest heaving so hard it hurts.

He needs Erik. Erik is what he needs right now.

_Stretching further and further—like he's being torn in half_ .

And then he latches on.

 

***

 

A wrenching pain at the back of his head; a  _ crack _ ; a flash of light and then Erik is in the corner of a dark room—a bedroom featuring a lamp and a small window. He can see a skyline outside. There's a bed and it's large and untidy: he can see leather straps hanging from the sides, half-tucked underneath, and he wonders what they mean. He's in a city. He knows because he can hear the crowds below, can almost feel their thoughts—thousands of minds vibrating the way steel does under his fingers.

The floor is slanted. He can't see a door.

Charles (appears and) leads Erik over to the bed, his hand soft against Erik's. He leans heavily against Erik as they walk—he's shaking and twitching, but Erik doesn't say anything. His face seems thin, but the room is so dark that Erik can't see much besides those blue eyes, reflecting the light from the lamp.

_I'm afraid this is our last night together, my friend._ Somehow, the words don't surprise Erik as much as they should. The dream is so shattered, so dark—bits sliding in and out of focus and existence. It's as though the dream is dying.

Erik wonders if Charles is too, but he doesn't ask.

Charles' fingernails are short and ragged and his hands are a little thick-looking—inelegant—but they squeeze Erik's so tightly that Erik is sure it's his _heart_ being pressed between Charles' fingers.

“I am glad to have known you.” The words don't express what they should; they don't express the odd burning feeling in Erik's chest or the way he can't control the tears that feel like fire against his face. “I am glad I dreamt with you.”

Charles' hand comes up to touch Erik's cheek, the palm a little sweaty against Erik's skin. He wants it there always. He wants Charles there always.

And in that moment, he suddenly understands.

_Are you ready?_

He shakes his head and he can feel a piece of Charles' confusion, bright in the dark.

“Stay,” he manages to say. “After I kill Schmidt—just for a few minutes—please. I need to tell you something.”

Charles looks into his eyes and Erik can see a small smile on his lips. (They are red, but chapped and scabbed from being bitten.) Charles nods.

Tears pour from Erik's eyes as the room falls away. Schmidt smiles at him from above the operating table. He is smiling with too many teeth, his eyes cold and grey as he raises a gun at Erik.

“Eins.”

Erik takes a moment (the first count) to remember Magda's face on the last night: the way tears shone in her eyes as she pulled Erik closer,  _closer—_ the way she gasped, her breathing catching in her throat so that he could see the ridges move—the way her curls fell over the pillow—the way she dug her fingers into his back and shoulders—the way her skin creased with her smile—

“ _Ani ohevet ot'cha_ ,” she whispered in the dark, the words vibrating against his skin.

He felt her tears on her face and kissed her softly until she fell silent, her hand resting on his chest.

“Zwei.”

He can still feel Magda's curls under his fingers, can hear her laugh and feel the hot sunshine in Israel fall against his skin.

And he can feel Schmidt's hands all over him, ripping him apart until—

The funny thing is that it should only be a monster that can rip a child to pieces, that can burn through an entire life—but Schmidt is only a man.

“Drei.”

Erik can feel Charles' hand against his cheek as the end of the gun explodes.

But he can feel the bullet—can feel its shape and structure. He can feel every molecule that vibrates from the heat—can feel how it aches to fly straight between his eyes.

But he stops it and lets it fall to the ground.

Schmidt is gone.

 

***

 

Erik looks beautiful at that moment—young and fresh and tanned—strong like a soldier, standing tall in the bright sunlight.

Charles will always remember the way he looks then.

And Erik breaks.

 

***

 

A pair of arms wrap around Erik as he shakes with sobs and he's warm and loved. He catches the scent of disinfectant as he presses his face against Charles' shoulder, their ears catching on each other. He can feel the bones of Charles' body pushing back against Erik.

_Come with me, my love._

There is grass beneath them, the smell of spring and freshly blooming flowers, the brush of a warm breeze. He pushes himself harder against Charles, not wanting to let go. He can't open his eyes.

“I want you to stay with me,” he chokes, his throat almost too thick with tears to speak. “Please—stay with me.”

He can feel the knit of Charles' jumper against his cheekbones. He keeps his eyes shut as Charles shifts a little away from him and presses their foreheads together.

Erik opens his eyes and looks at Charles, who is crying too. The sun is behind him and Erik can barely make out the dark waves of Charles' hair, his soft, red lips. His eyes are tightly shut, as though his heart is breaking too. He looks so young at that moment, so bright, so beautiful.

He squeezes Erik's hand.

_Goodbye._

Erik opens his eyes. He's lying on the floor, his head aching from where it had cracked against the floorboards. He can still feel Charles' hand in his.

He's fallen through the window.

He sobs.

 

***

 

The problem is that the last time Raven visited England, she was eleven and it was Christmas. She has no idea what it will be like in the spring and even less of an idea of what types of clothes she'll need. Anything for parties is cut out, for certain—but will she need pearls? Should she still be wearing black for Sharon?

That thought hurts and Raven immediately pulls her eyes away from any of the pale pink dress which she was examining. Hank comes in a few moments later, carrying two mugs of coffee. It occurs to Raven that, had anyone besides Hank entered, she would have been truly embarrassed to be found blue, still in her pajamas.

But it is Hank, so it just feels normal as she takes the silently offered mug. He's put a little swirl of cream on the top—it makes her smile.

“Sharon didn't really have any clothing rules for 'visiting adopted brothers in asylums', did she?” he says, sitting down on her unmade bed. Part of Raven wants to kick him, but instead she just laughs as she takes a sip of coffee. There's a touch of whiskey in it.

Hank's been in Westchester far too long for his own good.

“What do you think is appropriate?” she asks, a smirk already in place because she knows exactly how he's going to respond.

And right on cue, Hank raises his eyebrows, his glasses slipping a little down his nose as he puts his hand to his chest. “You're asking  _me_ ?”

“Yes, I'm asking you,” she says, pretending to scold. “I've not visited many asylums, whereas you've been coming to one for almost ten years. Tell me—what's appropriate?”

Hank laughs and shakes his head. “I don't know... Something nice without too many bright colors?”

“Worried about clashing colors?” Raven grins at him and then glances over her closet, moving backward to sit on the bed as well. “I suppose they might be upsetting to Sharon.”

Hank hums softly, taking a sip of coffee as she seats herself beside him. There's a moment of silence, the two of them staring into her closet. It's comfortable, calm. She's glad Hank is there.

“I think I'll bring the gray suit, the blue dress, the black skirt and a few shirts. Does that sound good?” She looks at him. He's still looking at the selection of clothes hanging up in front of them, a small crease between his eyebrows. (He's worried again—of course, he is.) He looks oddly young, sitting there in his plaid shirt and khakis, his fingers wrapped around the handle of his mug. His hair is a little damp from the shower he must've taken that morning, his nose shiny and pink.

His lips are red and soft-looking.

Finally, he swallows and turns to look at her, his eyes a little over-bright.

“Please let me come with you,” he says. His fingers twitch as though he wants to reach out to her, but changes his mind. “I just... I want to be there if you need me.”

For a second, Raven wants to cry.

It's only a second.

“And why would I need you?” she scoffs, rolling her eyes. She's sure she must look freakish—a blue girl with red hair and yellow eyes, throwing a hissy fit over nothing. But she's annoyed, not because she doesn't want him there, but because...

She isn't sure why.

And, for once, in the face of her anger, Hank doesn't back down or change subjects as easily as she shifts from form to form. He looks her in the eye, his hands still gripping the mug.

“Because Sharon just passed away, Raven.” The words hurt, like a punch to the stomach. Raven feels her nostrils flare and suddenly her head feels very thick. “The loss of a mother isn't easier for anyone—and that's ignoring that whole mess about your brother—”

“Do not call my brother a mess!” When did she stand up? When did her mug end up on the floor, lying on its side (mercifully empty)? Her chest is heaving so hard it aches as she glares at Hank. She wants to hit him, wants to break his glasses against his face. She's furious at him, but she doesn't know where it came from.

“You don't  _know_ him!” Hank is on his feet now too, his jaw set and his cheeks a little pink. All she can think of is that dead doctor and how there has to be a reason, but she can't find one and it  _hurts_ . “You have  _never_ met him. Before a few days ago, both you and I thought he was  _dead_ !”

“Shut up! You don't know anything!” she screams. “You don't know anything at all!”

She almost strikes him, but he catches her hand before it can hit his cheek. There's a second—a moment where her breath freezes in her lungs—where he's holding her hand and he brings it down slowly to take it in his other. He holds it tightly, his fingers pressing into the gaps between her bones, his thumbs rubbing against the textured parts of her skin.

“I know how much you love Sharon. She's your mother, Raven.”

He's very close now. She can feel his breath on her face as he speaks again. She can smell his cologne. (Sharon started Hank's compulsive need to wear cologne the day she told him he wouldn't be allowed to enter the house again as long as he smelled like, “little boy and plain soap.”) She can feel his pulse in his fingertips beating steadily with hers.

“It doesn't need to be easy.”

And she cries.

It isn't because she misses Sharon. She's been missing Sharon since before she died. She's been missing the years they won't have together; the time they did have; all the questions she'll never get to ask. Like what would be appropriate to wear to an asylum or how to tell Hank that she doesn't know how to be “just friends” with him, because they had never been “just friends” in the first place and she doesn't know how to start now.

She doesn't cry for those things. She cries for reasons she doesn't really know or understand. She cries because she wishes Hank had been there when Sharon was sick and because she doesn't know what she's going to do once she gives Charles the letter. She has no other purpose. Her entire life has been taking care of Sharon: driving home every weekend from university to see her, politely refusing all offers of employment or trips with friends to Switzerland or Florence... She's never used her degree, fallen out of touch with almost all her acquaintances besides Hank. She's never really lived outside of Westchester. She's never had to chase what she wanted because everything she wanted was  _there_ : it was her mother and her home and Hank and that's all she needed. She cries because she wishes she could kiss him right now, but she can't and so it's frustrating. She wishes he was there before, but she never called him and so he never came.

And that's when it starts to make a little sense.

Hank is rubbing circles into her back, his arms wrapped tightly around her like the pull-down bar on a roller coaster. She remembers the day when Hank asked Sharon's permission to take her out. It was the day she graduated high school and he drove her to Steeplechase Park in that rusty Oldsmobile. They spent the day there together in the sun, Hank's nose slowly becoming red from a sunburn, her voice becoming hoarse from laughing and screaming as they spun around the sharp curves of the tracks (the pull-down bar pressing into her stomach).

His fingers are strong against her spine.

She doesn't say anything aloud. She only sobs against his chest, her hands balled up in his shirt, trying to pull him as close as she can.

She made a mistake before, because the help and the support—the love she needed as she watched Sharon disappear before her eyes—everything she needed... Hank _is_ that everything  and she can see the weight of not being there hurts him too. They've both been foolish; they've both made mistakes.

And now Hank is reaching out to her, trying to bridge the gap between them, and she wants to reach out to him too, to wrap her arms around him, to breathe in the scent of his cologne. She wants to press her lips against his fingertips, to taste the salty sweat on his fingers.

It's a second chance.

She pulls back slowly, rubbing her eyes with her hands. She can hear his breath catch, but she doesn't look up at him. His hands are still on her back and she's suddenly remembers that she's only wearing a nightgown.

“We'll... um... we'll get you a ticket,” she whispers, her throat too thick to speak.

“You don't have to.”

There's that crease between his eyebrows. She finds herself laughing a little.

“I want you there.”

Hank smiles too.

 

***

 

_Raven makes Hank laugh within ten minutes of being introduced to him when, after several minutes of listening to him mutter about his professors and such, she says, “Wow! Fourteen and in university! You must be quite the ladies' man!” He laughs so hard he cries and Mrs. Hawthorn glares at the pair of them. Raven can't help feeling proud of herself as Hank gasps for air, his glasses sliding down to the end of his nose. His cheeks are redder than Raven's dress and a few tears truly fall against the lenses of his glasses._

_And it's that smile that gets to her—that odd, crooked smile that makes her stomach jolt in the realization that_ this  _is what it feels like._ This _is what it's like to find someone breathtakingly beautiful._

_And she doesn't know what she's going to do._

 

***

 

Charles lays his plans.

His focus is still shot, his headache just as strong as ever—he has a theory it's from stretching himself too far too often to reach Erik. Though, in that case, the headache should be fading, but it still beats and stabs into his skull. He can't bear to read anymore. It feels like nails are being driven through his skull.

But he gathers enough energy to make the nurse unlock the shaving cabinet and he smiles at her as she leaves. She's frightened by it. He smiles wider when he realises that once he's dead they'll find all the food in the bin and the razor in his hand and they'll finally understand that they could never contain him—that they could trap him in this apartment and in this body but they could _never_ control him.

He's going to be free now and he smiles despite his headache and his slipping focus.

A few minutes later, he's in the bathroom, hoisting himself up higher by the edge of the sink. He drags down the box that contains the shaving kit. He grips the handle of the razor and takes a deep breath, staring down at his hands, at how thin and pale they are.

He closes his eyes and remembers Erik's hands in his.

He's free.

 

***

 

_There's a way Magda holds his hand, where she tangles her fingers in his, her grip harsh and strong. She wakes in the night, jerking with sobs, and clutches his hand, her nails digging into his skin. She asks him where they are and he says “Home” every time—even when they are in cramped train cars after the war, trying not to remember the last time they were on a train, trying not to remember that many of their fellow passengers turned their backs when they were being led like lambs to the slaughter._

_Because they_ are _home. Their home is made up of the little things that couldn't be taken away from them: the way she feels in his arms, the spirals of her curls, the feel of the tiny hairs that cover her face, her eyes when she laughs..._

_Her lips as she breathes “ani ohevet ot'cha” into his skin..._

I love you.


	3. All around the mulberry bush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this chapter took forever. This is most likely due to the fact that it is (approximately) 3/4 the length of the first two combined. ABSOLUTELY ABSURD. Hopefully it's worth the wait.
> 
> A huge thank you to my sister, Maggie, and Jo (A.K.A., Wanderer (Straggler)) who are my editors, cheerleaders and generally PERFECT HUMAN BEINGS WHO FOR SOME REASON TOLERATE ME I DON'T EVEN GET IT.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the chapter. There's still a hopefully (please God let it be) short epilogue to come.

> _His voice was hoarse, and trembling with tender passion, as he said:—_
> 
> _‘Margaret!’_
> 
> _For an instant she looked up; and then sought to veil her luminous eyes by dropping her forehead on her hands. Again, stepping nearer, he besought her with another tremulous eager call upon her name._
> 
> _‘Margaret!’_
> 
> _Still lower went the head; more closely hidden was the face, almost resting on the table before her. He came close to her. He knelt by her side, to bring his face to a level with her ear; and whispered-panted out the words:—_
> 
> _‘Take care.—If you do not speak—I shall claim you as my own in some strange presumptuous way.—Send me away at once, if I must go;—Margaret!—’_
> 
> _At that third call she turned her face, still covered with her small white hands, towards him, and laid it on his shoulder, hiding it even there; and it was too delicious to feel her soft cheek against his, for him to wish to see either deep blushes or loving eyes. He clasped her close. But they both kept silence._
> 
> -Elizabeth Gaskell,  _North and South_ , Chapter 52: “Pack Clouds away”.

 

_There are stars all around, thin threads stretching between them. They look like diamonds, tossed over velvet. It feels like steam is passing over his face, warm and soft—like the sun against his skin._

_But there are monsters all around him, grabbing his wrists and dragging him back from the stars, into the dark._

_He's alone. He's alone._

_He's alone with monsters._

_It's cold—so cold and dark. His thoughts echo around him. He's alone and the monsters crouch in the shadows, waiting._

_Waiting..._

_And suddenly, there is snow._

 

***

 

Erik knows that everyone has dreams, knows that they dream of everything, anything. They dream of their lives or their worries or their fears. They dream of the things they've seen that haunt them, the things they've felt that they'll always remember.

Erik doesn't know what Magda dreamt of.

And he doesn't know what Charles dreamt of either.

One morning, he leaves the flat for the day and buys himself some new clothes and a pair of silver cufflinks. They aren't exactly like his father's, which were probably melted down during the war or given to some fine Nazi officer, but they're nice enough. He picks them because he can imagine how they'd look in the firelight, because he can remember his father making a similar pair once for a bridegroom, his sister laughing as she helped him fit the pieces together.

When he goes to pay, he asks the man behind the counter if they are hiring anyone. (He doesn't actually need the money—he has money and favours all over the world, but working is good for a man, or so his father used to say.) He explains that his mother worked with clothes (she was a laundress—they don't need to know that) and that he enjoys working with people (he doesn't—they don't need to know that).

He's hired to wash the floors at the end of each day. It's not the job he was hoping for, but it's work and he should be working. Working is good.

Days go by and he dreams at night that he is lying on a sunny hilltop, the grass tickling his skin. Trees grow around him, their leaves lush and green. The sky is a clear, pale blue (it's not bright, though—he's seen brighter blues) and the sun burns hot above him. He knows he should be happy here, should love every blade of grass (some have holes in them from insects), should love the clear, cloudless sky—

He dreams of other things too—there are still nightmares, but they aren't every night. They don't follow him through the day anymore; they don't rip out his insides and wake him screaming.

Not every night, anyway.

It's better—but at the same time, it feels as empty as Magda's eyes when she was remembering, when he would have to grip her shoulders to bring her back to the present and remind her where they were: home.

He doesn't have a home anymore. He is free man with no place to go back to. The words he forgot to say burn deep in his chest. He mourns.

He lives a life he never wanted—empty, lonely, but  _ painfully _ free.

Liberty is wasted on men like him.

A month goes by.

 

***

 

Raven watches the rain outside. It's still mostly light out, but she's been awake so long that, even if the sun were still shining bright, she'd still want to curl up and sleep. She doesn't think she likes flying, but that may just be because she's exhausted and, in a few days time, she'll probably be talking about how wonderful it was. She pulls her robe closer around her, watching the passers-by below as they run for cover from the rain (her wet hair from the bath is making her cold).

The hotel room isn't very big, but it's tastefully decorated and it's comfortable. She's already hung up her clothes in the closet and placed her shoes neatly beside. She's surprised by how well she adjusts to the space, but maybe it's because the room is almost exactly the same size as her own back in Westchester. The same proportions, just different décor. It's curious.

She's very aware of the envelope sitting on the bedside table, the faded words written across it. Tomorrow, she'll hand that envelope over, then she and Hank will go to London for a few days (Hank has been to London before, to go to scientific conventions and such, but this will be his first time as a tourist and Raven is looking forward to it) and then fly back to New York. It's a simple trip, but there's an odd burning sensation in her chest that she knows is nerves.

Drops slide down the glass as someone begins to turn on the streetlamps outside. They look like golden halos in the dusk, lighting up the rain that falls around them.

Hank is in the room next door and she can hear when he turns on and off the tap and crosses the room. His footsteps pause and she wonders if he's stopping to look out the window too. She wonders if his cheeks are still flushed from running out in the rain to get their suitcases. (“You should go take a bath and warm up,” he said, smiling and trying to dry his glasses on his cuff. “I'll drop off your things in your room.”) She wonders if he's straining to hear her too, staring out at the rain without really seeing it.

It's so clear in her mind: his wet hair stuck to his forehead, his lips barely parted, his eyes over-bright. It's the way he looked at her, as though he wants to cry—as though love is burning through his chest the way it's burning through hers. Impossible to hide—his hair dark with sweat as he laughed into curve of her waist.

Heart-breaking.

She glances at the envelope on the bedside table, at the worn words written in ink— _ My darling Charlie _ —and hears the  _ thunk _ of a shoe dropping in the next room. Her face feels stiff, the way it has since Sharon became ill, the way it has since she and Hank...

_ His hands shook a little and he wouldn't look at her. He looked worried. (Of course he was worried—he was Hank.) His shoulders were tense. He had a few freckles on his back; his shoulder blades stood out like wings. The morning sun lit up the hair on his arms—golden, like a halo. _

_“I don't think it would be a good idea,” he said and she nodded and smiled as though she understood._

She's tired of feeling stiff and cold. She wants to be warm, to laugh. She wants to satisfy the ache in her chest, to follow the thread that seems to be forever tied from her heart to Hank's.

She wants to be happy.

_ Thunk _ . The second shoe drops and she gets up from the window seat. She crosses the room.

It takes less than a minute and she's standing just outside Hank's door, still wearing her robe, her hair blonde and her skin pale. She gets a sense of d é ja vu—as though she's stood here before.

She's always been just outside his door.

He doesn't have a shirt on when greets her. (Despite herself) it's the first thing she notices and she's glad to see the little freckles on his shoulders. He's still damp from the rain and his glasses are in his hand. His eyes are wide, questioning.

They're so blue. She's never seen anything so blue before.

There's a strange moment when she's lost for words and is only just barely stopping herself from reaching out for his belt buckle. Then that little crease appears on his forehead as he steps forward and she's wishes it weren't there, wishes she could smooth it away. There's nothing to worry about. This is right. This is how it's supposed to be.

The two of them, standing together.

“Are you okay?” he asks and she shakes her head, for some reason, and closes the space between them. She shifts into blue and Hank closes his fingers around her hand, brings it to his chest.

There aren't any words—nothing needs to be said. His lips brush her forehead, warm and soft, and he squeezes her hand.

She presses closer to him.

 

***

 

There are times when Erik is sure that it wasn't real, when he's sure that Charles is just a pretend person—a boy-man who danced through his dreams with bright eyes and freckled skin, who held Erik's hand and freed him. Logic says it's only a dream—reality says it's only a dream.

And yet there's something... something inside him that tells him it was real. It tugs deep from his core, reminding him of Charles' face as the sun shone behind him, the way his tears fell on Erik's hand. (Why didn't Erik speak then? Maybe if he had said the words—but Charles knew. Charles knew before Erik had, Erik was sure. He must've, because Charles was something different from Erik—beyond him, but somehow still his mirror image.) It was a dream—but Charles' mind, his words that echoed in Erik's thoughts—those things are real. He's sure of it.

And at the same time, he isn't sure at all.

The staff do not speak to him at his work (Why would they? He is a Jew and a foreigner, neither of which are well-liked in London.), but he likes to watch them as they work. They seem brighter than he is—bright-colored shirts with dark blazers and bright pocket squares, their shoes shone so brightly, they glimmer like flecks of sunlight through glass. They are bright with life (though he sees their changing emotions too, the way they shift from day to day—happiness, sadness, anger, indifference, contentment, aggravation... but always burning with life).

Erik is paid in pound notes each weekend. (He works on Saturdays and he feels guilty for it.) He makes the wood floors shine at the end of each day and, by noon the next, they are scuffed and filthy again.

He dreams of Charles some nights still. He dreams of his face and his fingers and his freckles and his thick, dark hair. He dreams of Charles' touch, just ghosting over Erik's skin. He dreams of his out-stretched hand on that hillside, when Erik cried from his soul, “ _ I have no life left to live. _ ”

When Charles said,  _ Then let's make one together. _

_ Let's make a life together. _

But the Charles in his dreams is only half. He is a collection of memories, but nothing original. This Charles has no secrets, no wish to hide his face. He doesn't tremble strangely and his smile isn't so shocking. He's half-Charles, half-something else—something dead, something cold, something made of bloody snow and burning fingers.

He can't dream and remember Charles as he dreams and remembers Magda, because Magda he has touched and memorised (though there are still little parts missing, parts he'll never know because it's too late to ask). But Charles is only dreams and yet  _ not _ dreams but  _ reality _ and it hurts him when he tries to remember his face or his touch, because there's really nothing to remember.

There was never anything there—only dreams and ghosts.

Charles was never really real.

Nothing is real.

He makes the floor shine like stars in the sky and by the next evening, it's cloudy and dirty. He makes the floor shine like a mirror and by the next evening, it's covered with footprints and mud from outside and dust and lint from the clothes. He makes the floor shine.

It's five weeks after Charles. It's six.

It's night and Erik dreams of snow. He is cold, so cold he could die. His throat feels raw from the freezing air and his stomach burns from being empty. The skin on his face is stiff, as though he has been crying or bleeding and he doesn't know which.

It's dark. He is blind.

The snow sticks pins into his skin, making him bleed. His calves are in pain, like he's been running. He can feel something under his fingernails—he can feel metal around him—too much metal—it screams—

There's a flash of light and something seems to burst behind his eyes as a hand grabs his wrist.

He knows that hand—he knows that touch.

(A creature.) His eyes are still blue, but some of the blood vessels seem to have burst, both in his eyes and the skin around, making it almost red. The skin on his face is pale and dry, coming off in chunks and flakes. His lips are scarlet, bleeding and chapped. His hair has been shaved badly, some parts so close that the skin has scabbed, other parts left long enough that there's still a full centimetre of hair. He's twisted, as though parts of him have been ripped out and put back wrong. He looks all wrong—unclear—uncared for—unclean.

It's hardly a person anymore. It's a  _ thing _ , with scars on its wrists and its throat like something has tried to slash it open.

Tears fall from its eyes and melt the snow.

_ Don't look at me. _

_Please._

_Let me be a human being._

__ Erik drops to his knees ( _ he can't feel his legs _ ), wanting to grasp its hands, but they are closed into fists, coated in half-dried blood. It looks into his eyes—radial muscles like waves in the ocean.

He sees eternity in those eyes.

_ Help me. _

And a wave crashes into him—image after image—tangled up emotions: panic; the sun shining through a window; a huge empty room with seats stretching back to the walls;  _ dom—; _ sitting alone; — _ inus _ ; a strange shape exploding outwards; a crowd of people; noise; a streetlamp;  _ illu— _ ; a warm-looking man smiling and speaking in a warm voice; mourning; — _ mina— _ ; the sound of laughter; a hand trembling; — _ tio _ ; bright sky; a razor; trapped; the moon;  _ mea _ ; a brick wall; an empty hallway; panic; a little walled garden; trapped; a syringe; noise; silence—

Erik opens his eyes, daylight pouring over his face, those words still etched into the wall across his bed.

_ Find the window. _

It's the eighth week and, less than an hour after he wakes, Erik is on a train, watching the city fly by and shift into countryside. His bag sits on his lap and he wonders if anyone will wonder where he is tonight when he doesn't come in to clean the floors.

It doesn't really matter to him.

Nothing really matters.

Except this.

 

***

 

_There's no noise._

_It's silent._

_He screams. He hits his head against the wall. He screams. His wrists begin to bleed again._

_A syringe is slammed into his arm._

_The world melts._

_He sleeps._

 

***

 

Raven wakes in Hank's arms.

It feels right.

 

***

 

_ Dominus illuminatio mea _ .

It's a lucky coincidence that Erik knows those words, that he heard the owner of the store talking to one of the tailors about his university days (his father had wanted him to be an academic apparently, though Erik found this curious. Surely there was less money to be had in academia?). It's so very lucky that Erik finds himself wondering, for the first time since he and Magda were married, if God is truly watching him.

He comes to no conclusions before the end of the trip, but that's alright.

There will be plenty of time for that later.

He runs to the university from the station, his shoes rubbing uncomfortably against his feet as he pounds against the sidewalk. It's not a warm day—it's sunny, but chill. There's a thin mist in the air, as though it's rained the night before. He has to dodge around people and cars as he sprints and he almost slips in puddles on occasion, but he keeps running.

He feels light, happy—closer to home than he's felt in a long time. It's odd that he would find it here, in a place that's cold-but-sunny—it's so different from the wet heat of summer in Tel Aviv, from the warmth of his childhood house in Nuremberg.

It's different, but that's good.

He's coming home.

 

***

 

_His teeth dig into the rubber as another jolt shoots through his body. He knows he's crying. He feels shattered. Pain bursts behind his eyes. Lights flash._

_But it's better than the metal room where he lives—where everything is silent and his thoughts bounce back to him. The world could be dead and he wouldn't know. They give him jabs and he slips in and out of dreams (his own). Sometimes, when he wakes, he imagines Erik is there, lying beside him on the floor. (They took away his chair and left him with only the padded floor and the padded walls—but he knows what lies beneath the cloth. They put him in this room before, when he could kick and fight against it. He knows the sound of the room, knows the way his thoughts echo here.)_

_And then Erik disappears and he tries to pull himself up on the wall, but he can't and he can't do anything but lie on the floor._

_His body jerks without his meaning it to. He sometimes thinks about that day when they stuck the needle into him, through the back of his neck, sending toxins through him. He thinks about waking up one morning to find he couldn't move. He couldn't move. He couldn't move. (The thought repeats and repeats and repeats, like the swing of a rocking chair. He saw one once—through someone else's eyes.)_

_Silence._

_Noise._

_The straps dig into his wrists. His head hits the table._

_They have plans for him now. He can see their plans. They're going to cut him apart—ruin him like they ruined Isabella—cut up his mind._

_They've already ruined his body. Now they're going to ruin his mind._

_ He imagines Erik's hands on either side of his face, cradling his jaw in his palms, his thumbs brushing Charles' mouth. He imagines how Erik looked when he destroyed Schmidt, how he looked at that moment—tall and strong, like a soldier. He imagines Erik broken, whispering: “ _ Please—stay with me. _ ” _

__ Please.

_ Help me _ .

 

***

 

It smells strange inside—like mold and antiseptic. The paint on the walls is chipped and a dull sort of blue. It looks as though it was once bright and striking and possibly turquoise, but it's faded and gotten scuffed along the bottom of the wall. The floor is slanted and uneven from water damage or just settling wrong. There's one small window—painted shut—and a bare light bulb hanging by its wiring from the ceiling.

The room is small with three walls, because it's been fit into a corner. It contains only two chairs and a coffee table in the center with a newspaper and a vase of dried flowers sitting on its surface. The whole space seems off somehow and, as Raven shifts in her straight-backed chair, she tries to ignore the tight feeling in her chest.

It's been fifteen minutes since she and Hank were checked by a rough but quiet guard who told them to wait for a doctor to come and locked the door behind himself.

She glances at her watch: seventeen minutes.

Hank takes her hand from time to time and it makes her feel like her heart has jumped in her chest. She's blonde for the day and looks every inch Sharon Xavier's daughter, from her neat pearls to her shiny black pumps. (But part of her still whispers in Sharon's voice, still reminds her when she catches sight of her reflection, still wraps her in its arms and says:  _ Be blue, my darling _ .) She's wearing her Sunday best, as it were (which makes sense, because it  _ is _ Sunday).

Another five minutes pass; Hank's fingers are still tangled in hers.

But eventually, she hears the lock click and a man dressed all in white enters the room. His skin is slightly gray, his eyes frighteningly pale and blank. His hair is dark, slicked back from his face. He smiles at them.

“Miss Xavier, yes?” His voice is smooth and, though Raven's sure he has an accent, it seems to slide out of her memory as soon as she hears it, like oil on water. He puts out his hand for her to shake. “I'm Dr. Thomas Gaskill. I apologize for keeping you waiting.”

Raven gives a polite smile and lets her hand drop back to her side, before turning towards Hank. “This is my good friend, Hank McCoy. He'll be accompanying me today.”

Gaskill nods, his smile still in place as he shakes Hank's hand. He turns back to Raven. “Before we go to see Mr. Xavier, I wanted to discuss his condition a little with you. Would you like to come to my office?”

They walk down a narrow hall. The walls are just as dull and cracked as those in the waiting room. The tightness in her chest gets worse the further they move into the building. There aren't any windows in the hall. Bare bulbs hang from the ceiling. The envelope in her breast pocket feels like it's stabbing into her skin.

They enter a small, square room, dominated by a desk. There's a barred window against the back wall and a bookshelf against the right. There's nothing on the desk but a single file, clearly labeled:  _ Xavier, Charles F. _

_ My darling Charlie _ .

“Now,” Gaskill says, settling in the chair behind the desk. He picks up the file. “How much do you already know about your brother's condition?”

Raven and Hank sit—his fingers brush the back of her hand and the tightness in her chest eases a little. She swallows hard and takes a deep breath before speaking. She's nervous. She has no reason to be nervous, but there's something frightening about the doctor's even, blank gaze.

It's like he's searching for something, some little tick that will give away all her secrets—secrets that will throw her into small, triangular rooms. She'll be locked away.

He won't stop smiling.

She focuses on one of the bars beyond the window. “I know that he... um... that he has... hallucinations or something and... and that he's violent and...” Her voice catches in her throat. “I know that he killed a doctor.”

She can feel Hank's stare, but Gaskill just nods and thumbs the corner of the file. His expression is still dull. “Is that all you know?”

“Basically.”

He opens the file, his gaze traveling quickly from line to line. Raven wonders if there's a photograph with the other documentation. “Your brother is an interesting patient. He's under the belief that he can hear people's thoughts—doubtless a result of the trauma from his father's death. We did some testing to see if there was any fact behind his claims—” He meets Raven's eyes and smiles a little wider. “Just a precaution, you know. We're always shooting higher. Unfortunately, he's simply delusional. We treated him at his home for sometime, but Mrs. Xavier was becoming distressed from his presence and he required a more secure environment, so he was brought here. We tried different therapies for several years. He seemed to be improving, enough so that he could live independently in the city. He was assisting Professor O'Brien at Oxford University—”

“Yes!” Raven bursts out and she isn't sure why she feels pride at his words. She doesn't really have anything to do with Charles or his accomplishments or his failures. Gaskill looks at her carefully, as though making a mental note.

“I'm afraid, though, that in the past few months, we've seen a very rapid decline in his mental state. He was moved back to the facility two months ago after attempting to commit suicide. Luckily, his nurse was downstairs and found him in time. We've been keeping him heavily sedated lately so he doesn't attempt to harm himself or anyone else further.” He's still smiling. It's unnerving.

It's Hank who speaks next, his voice strong and even. His eyes are bright behind his glasses. He's not shaking like she is. He looks oddly determined. “What in particular did you want to tell us?”

Gaskill's expression is almost the opposite of Hank's. He's cold and blank—impossible to read or guess. “I merely wanted to first warn Miss Xavier of her brother's history. I also need to explain another... important circumstance.” It's the first time he's hesitated and Raven notices that he's started rubbing his thumb more rapidly against the pages in the file. It's like he's nervous

He's still looking at Hank, his expression unmoving. “One of the treatments we attempted on Mr. Xavier left him with significant damage to his cerebellum. He lost much of his fine motor control. He can barely speak; he can barely write—he can't walk at all. I am very sorry.”

It feels like she's just swallowed an ice cube, the cold spreading up through her system. She can't think. She can't move. It's like bits of her are dying. She doesn't understand what she's feeling. It's like parts of her are mourning something she never had to begin with. She wants to cry, but she doesn't want to move. She'll break if she moves, she's sure of it.

Gaskill speaks for a few more moments, but Raven can't hear him. She's not sure why she's so shocked, why she feels so frightened. It's just something about the lop-sided floor and the blank gaze of the doctor, carefully taking notes inside his head and the constant scent of mold and antiseptic and something metallic.

Hank and the doctor both stand, but she still feels too heavy, too fragile to move. She can only stare at the spot where Hank sat, her mind feeling both over-full and entirely empty. She distantly hears their voices stop and then Hank asking softly for a few moments in private. The door shuts.

His hand is warm on her cheek, his gaze soft as he kneels down in front of her. Raven realizes it's not just her hands shaking, but her entire body. She tries to take a deep breath, but it catches in her throat.

“What's the matter?” His voice is so different than it was when he spoke to Gaskill—sweeter, softer, but with the same bright spark in it; the same spark that lights up his eyes when he's excited; the same spark that made her fall in love so completely that sunny day at Steeplechase Park. The spark  _ is _ Hank, who's so bright, so passionate, his spirit can be seen from the outside.

She wants to cry—she already feels like she  _ is _ crying—but when she speaks, her voice is remarkably steady.

“I'd hoped that, somehow... that they were wrong.” The confession makes her feel like she's just had some heavy burden lifted from her shoulders—the sadness remains, but the weight can be shared. She continues before Hank can say anything. “I'd hoped that maybe I could... I could take him back—that we could be a family or something.” Her nails dig into her palms. Her cheeks are burning from embarrassment, but Hank just watches her carefully, his expression thoughtful—sincere—a little concerned. “I know it's—”

Her voice cracks and Hank covers her hand with his own. “I understand. I know.”

She could kiss him at that moment. The thought calms her a little.

He leans closer, his expression becoming less soft, less gentle, and more severe. He looks straight into her eyes, the same way he did when they sat together for the first time and he tried to explain all his plans for research to her. His mouth is tight, his jaw set. He's older now, but just as determined. His mouth opens.

He whispers so softly that it's almost impossible to hear him. It's not the small distance between their faces that allows Raven to understand—it's the years between them. It's the nights spent sharing secrets in the lonely corners of Xavier Manor, the fire casting shadows across the room, making the shapes of the furniture dance in the dark. It's the creases she memorized in his hands. It's the way his throat vibrated the night before as he apologized for not being there, for pushing her away. It's how they fit perfectly as they lie together, when she presses her toes into the spaces between his much longer ones. It's his smile the first time he saw her blue. It's the night she pressed kisses into his stomach, when he begged her not to be pale and blonde so he could rub his fingers against the texture of her skin.

It's the life between them, the life they've made together.

It's when he whispers at that moment, “He's lying.”

“What?” she breathes. He leans closer until she can only see the shell of his ear, the curve of his neck, the hairs that curl around the base of his hairline.

In that moment, there could be nothing in the world but the two of them.

“Dr. Gaskill is lying.” His breath is hot against her skin. “He said that... that Charles couldn't walk  _ at all _ because of damage to his cerebellum. He said it specifically, right? 'He can't walk  _ at all _ ', right?”

“What does that—?”

“Wait; I'm not done. Damage to the cerebellum doesn't make it so you can't walk  _ at all _ . It means it may be... difficult to walk, but not impossible. We did a lab experiment with rats and a few other small animals once—it was to test a possible medicine but it had bad side-effects—and they could still walk afterward.” He moves back again and his eyes spark as he looks at her. “He's lying.”

It's not that her heart had stopped beating—it's not even that it felt that way—but the blood seems to be thumping through her veins twice as fast as before, burning hot through her system. She grips Hank's hand tightly, warmth spreading through her.

“Do you think he's lying about anything else?” she whispers. Hank squeezes her hand back and gives the slightest of nods.

She stand slowly, still shaking a little, and Hank rises with her. When they exit the office, Gaskill is reading the file, his expression serious, but he smiles again when he sees them, the file closing neatly in his hands.

“Are you ready to go see your brother, Miss Xavier?”

She nods, knowing her face is passive, emotionless. She focuses on the dull, plaster walls as they make their way down the crooked hall, past the doors that lead, presumably, to the offices of the other doctors. (Hank's fingers brush the back of her hand as they walk.) The hall seems to get smaller as they move forward and it ends in a stairwell—one side leading up, the other going down.

They descend.

 

***

 

He recognises her hands first and the shape of her mind. He looks into her eyes as she presses the needle into his skin. Her expression is pinched, the skin around her eyes very red. Her hair is still luscious-looking—auburn. She avoids his gaze.

The second time she comes in, it's to give him his food. She kneels beside him on the padded floor, gentle but firm, and explains that if he doesn't eat, they'll have to force-feed him.

The dampener digs into his skull and he vomits on her legs.

The third time she comes in and pushes the needle into his skin, he tells her he's sorry. She takes his hand and whispers:

“ _ You have nothing to be sorry for. _ ”

The fourth time she comes in, it's to bathe him.

“ _ You have a guest _ ,” she says.

 

***

 

Raven can hear them.

It starts soft—a sort of moaning, muttering noise coming from behind one of the doors. (They're different from the ones upstairs, fitted with extra locks and security bars. They look heavier than the ones above as well and they appear to be made of metal instead of wood. They're all white with what looks like a miniature blackboard nailed to each one, baring the patient's name.) Someone else is shouting. Raven can't make out the words—they're muffled by the walls and door—but the person is crying. She can hear the way the sound is broken by sobs, the hitches of breath, the voice breaking at higher pitches.

Gaskill doesn't stop walking.

They pass by several doors, the doctor never breaking his pace. There's a thumping noise from one of the rooms, like someone throwing themselves against a solid surface. Some of the doors are silent and Raven wonders about the names written on the blackboards, wonders about their families, about what brought them to this place.

They finally stop at a door at the very end of the hall, marked  _ Xavier, Charles F. _ Gaskill unlocks it (which takes over thirty seconds. Raven finds herself attempting to memorize his actions and makes herself focus instead on a crack in the plaster.) and pulls the door open.

The corners of the envelope poke into her skin.

She isn't sure what she expected. She doesn't know what she wanted to expect. (She wanted the door to open to see the little boy from Sharon's photographs smiling back at her, his cheeks pink and freckled. She wanted to see the darling Charlie of Sharon's half-told stories. She wanted that boy to be real. She wanted to take back that dent in the wood panels of Xavier Manor and make it smooth, make it all better.)

She didn't expect a padded room, the cloth over the walls stained and mildewed in places. (The space smells like feet, wet cigarette smoke and maybe urine.) She didn't expect the young man sitting against one of the walls, legs stretched out in front of him, stitches visible one of his wrists.

(She can see the tail end of a scar under his jaw and her eyes burn.)

His hair isn't dark or wavy like in the old photographs—it's been poorly shaved, some parts so close to the skin, it's left half-healed cuts. His skin is pale, colorless, except for the red around his eyes. He's biting his lip, which already looks mostly raw. One of his hands pulls on the longer bits of hair that stand out from his scalp. His clothes are almost white (they're stained in places and Raven doesn't want to think about it)—wrinkled, ill-fitting cotton that does little to hide the way his bones stick out under his skin.

There's a circle of metal around his head—a band about an inch thick that's so tight it cuts into his brow. It looks like steel, but the sheen is wrong and she wonders what it's doing to him.

She moves to step forward, but Gaskill stops her, his expression a little stern. He moves into the room himself, footsteps silent on the padded floor.

“Xavier, you have a guest here.”

He doesn't look up as Gaskill speaks—in fact, he draws himself  _ inward _ , bringing back his chin, trying to sink into the wall. He looks sick, like an overgrown child in ugly, dirty pajamas, his cheeks hollow and pale, his nails chewed and messy. She can't see his eyes, but he's trembling.

She takes a step forward and, this time, no one stops her.

She kneels down beside him, slowly, folding her feet beneath her and pressing her hands against her thighs. She can see that he's following the motion, his eyes half-open, his teeth digging into his lip.

“Hello.”

Her voice sounds too weak, too soft, but he turns his face towards her. His lower lip is bleeding, a scarlet split plainly visible near the center. His eyes are the same blue as Sharon's: a true blue—not like Hank's, which are sort of greenish. Most of his features, though, look more like the photographs she's seen of Brian Xavier, only without the thin, neat mustache. (His nose, especially, reminds her of the photograph that sat by Sharon's bed, taken on the beach in the '20s—soft, a little over-large, but somehow charming.)

“My name is Raven,” she whispers, resisting the urge to reach out and touch the hand that sits limp by his side. He looks like he'd spook at any physical contact—his shoulders are tensed, one hand still tugging on a bit of hair. “Raven Xavier. I'm... I'm sort of your sister.”

Something seems to flicker in his expression and she can see his pupils refocus, taking in her appearance. He looks like Sharon then—standing with her back to the fire, smiling in a way that was almost... mischievous. She can see interest in his eyes, a sort of recognition. (Or maybe she's imagining that. She must be. There's simply no—)

He puts his hand on hers and she feels... something: a warmth that's not really hers. There's a little blood around his nails, but his palms are soft—mostly unused—mostly uncared for. She looks up at his face and he's staring straight into her eyes. Something softens in his gaze and a taste like vanilla fills her mouth—vanilla and ginger, like the scented ornaments that hung on the Christmas tree each year. Clean, warm—it's like being pulled close—it's like coming home.

He's not a boy; he's a young man.

He's her brother.

“I've got something here for you,” she says and he blinks slowly, one eye closing a little earlier than the other. She reaches into her breast pocket with her free hand and takes out the envelope. He stares at it and then reaches out to take it in his hand. (The warmth and the taste of vanilla-ginger vanishes as he lifts his palm.) His arm jerks irregularly and the paper rustles audibly from his shaking. He's trembling so much that he ends up basically shredding the envelope in his attempt to open it.

She can't read the letter from where she's sitting, but she watches his face as he reads, his lips pressing together in a thin line, his gaze becoming over bright. He doesn't cry, but his motions are strange, too sudden and sharp, as he tries to refold the letter. She watches as he gives up and crumples it, crushing the paper against his chest, curling up around it. His head is almost in his own lap, his right arm twitching. He starts humming, low and soft, and Raven wants to comfort him, but she can't.

“I'm sorry, Charlie,” she says, as gently as she can. He looks up at her once more—his eyes are wet, but he looks curious, a little surprised. He sits up and she thinks again about the taste of ginger and vanilla. “I'm so sorry.”

There's something in his eyes... It's not a spark, like Hank's. It's nowhere near as sharp or bright as the looks Hank gives her—but it's similar. It's softer: like there are stars in his eyes, distant but blazing—shining even across the vastness of space as he places his hand on hers once more. Warmth blossoms again through her system. Her face feels pinched, like she's about to cry.

“ _ Thanggyurafen _ .”

The sound cuts through her thoughts and she stares at him for a few moments, her face suddenly very hot. She doesn't know what he just tried to say. It's like his cheeks and tongue have sort of melted, like they're limp, useless—like his cheeks have fallen against his teeth and he can't lift them anymore. He's looking at her, his eyes wide with sincerity—trying so hard to communicate. He's smiling a little and the warmth spreads all the way down to her fingertips. She's sure for a second that she can smell whiskey, as though from someone's breath—soft in her sinuses, reaching down to her tongue.

And she realizes that they could be anywhere at that moment. They could be anywhere in the world—at any time—and he would still smile at her that way: warm, sweet, open; a mischievous glint in his eyes. She's forgotten about Gaskill, though she's still very aware of Hank, standing just in the doorway. It's like Charlie's been looking at her this way for years.

_ Her brother _ .

“I think Mr. Xavier had best go back to resting. He's not been able to take a full dose of his sedatives today because of your visit.” Gaskill's voice—which before seemed too bland, too clinical—sounds grating now. It's too loud for the space. Raven looks up at him to see he's returned to his blankly pleasant expression. Charlie withdraws his hand and Raven turns back to him.

“It was so good to meet you,” she says and he blinks, one eye shutting before the other. She imagines he could be quite handsome in some alternate world—large eyes, striking features, sweet smile. The letter is still pressed to his chest.

She's not really sure what is happening, but now Gaskill's trying to take it from him and suddenly, Charlie is screaming, clutching it tighter, trying to move from Gaskill's hands. He's saying something about how Charlie can't have anything in his room. There are tears streaming down Charlie's cheeks now and he's fallen to his side, trying to fold himself up so Gaskill can't reach the letter.

There's a high-pitched ringing in Raven's ears. She drops down to her knees again, trying to push Gaskill back so she can try to reason with Charlie, but he's too frenzied now—screaming endlessly, digging his ripped-up nails into his neck, scratching. She reaches towards him and Hank pulls her back just in time to avoid Charlie's fist—though she's fairly sure he's aiming at Gaskill, who finally pulls the letter from his hand.

He pushes her and Hank from the room and shuts the door with a bang. Raven's ears are still ringing as Gaskill shoves the letter at her, looking angrier and somehow much more human than before.

“I apologize for that, Miss Xavier,” he says, trying to recover himself. “Thank you for visiting Mr. Xavier. I'm sure he very much appreciated the letter.” He makes a vague gesture towards the crushed paper that sits in her palm and she realizes for the first time that she's actually holding it again.

“Are you sure he can't keep it? It's... it's for him.” She doesn't want it. It's not hers. She stares at it—she shouldn't even be holding it at all.

“Very sure. You'd be amazed what one can do with a piece of paper. Now—”

And then the lights go out. She can hear light bulbs smashing against the floor and she screams, pressing herself against Hank. Something flies past her. Patients are crying out from their cells—confused, terrified. There's a  _ bang _ and a  _ crack _ .

Then silence, except for the cries of the inmates trapped in the dark.

She holds Hank as tight as she can. She can feel his ribcage through his shirt, can feel his hand pressing against her back.

There are footsteps coming from the other end of the hallway. Hank tightens his arms around her and she thinks of Steeplechase Park, of when she bought a stick of cotton candy and he chased after her for it.

There's a squeak of metal rubbing against metal and a lightbulb flickers on in the center of the hall—blindingly bright after the oppressive darkness. She blinks repeatedly, trying to clear ghosts of images from her eyes. Her vision eventually clears.

But there's no one beneath the bulb. She and Hank are still in the shadows, watching, waiting. The footsteps are getting closer. She can hear Hank's heartbeat. His body is so warm. She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment and breathes as deeply as she can, focusing on the scent of his cologne and the feeling of his back under her hands.

She reopens her eyes just as a man steps into the pool of light created by the single bulb.

He's tall and wiry-looking—broad-shouldered, but narrow everywhere else. (He looks underweight, actually. His cheekbones jut out and his jaw looks too broad for the rest of his face.) He's not running, but his chest is rising and falling in such a way that implies that he has been just moments before. He's slightly stooped, his eyes hidden in shadow.

The clasp of Raven's necklace vibrates against the back of her neck. She closes her hand tightly around the crumpled letter.

She watches as the bulb turns from behind the man and flickers out, sending them into darkness again.

The footsteps don't stop.

The light comes on just above her and Hank and she realizes that Gaskill is lying on the floor, his head bleeding from where it seems to have hit the door.

And the man is right in front of her now. He's just a little shorter than Hank, but his expression is cold, closed. He's tense like a wound up spring, staring carefully at Hank then at her. She can't move—she can't breathe.

“Where is Charles?” he asks.

 

***

 

Erik stares up at the intimidating stone structure. It's Oxford University—ancient, imposing; full of the knowledge gathered over hundreds of years. Erik doesn't belong here. Erik is an undereducated Jew who missed his final years of school because of hatred and, once given freedom, jumped straight into the army. He is not welcome here.

He is a fool to come, but he would be more of a fool for leaving.

So he moves forward. There are students everywhere, but they look happy to be where they are. He passes by bright-eyed twenty-somethings and tries to remember who he was at their age.

He was a second lieutenant in the IDF and already married to Magda—who was a first lieutenant herself. He was already a man, not a boy anymore.

He keeps walking forward, ignoring the odd looks he gets from the students. They stare at him in his unpressed shirt and trousers which are bleached a little at the knees from falling while washing the floors, but he doesn't stop.

He's trying to recall something else now—a face Charles showed him in the dream. The man with the warm mind and dark eyes. That's who he has to find.

He glances at each person he passes to see if they look anything like the smiling expression, the wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, the wild hair—but so far, there is no one. No one is quite warm enough. No one seems quite gentle enough.

Unfortunately, he has no name to use to ask the students. He doesn't know the name of the man, but he knows—in the same way that one "just knows" in dreams—that he's  _ here _ . The man belongs here—he's part of this place for Charles.

He ducks into doorways whenever someone who seems to be in a higher position of authority comes along, worried that he's not really allowed to be here. (He doesn't belong—a stupid Jew who runs after a man-boy from a few vivid dreams.) The professors look grand with their academic's robes billowing out behind them, books under their arms.

Men of learning.

He moves further and further into the university, feeling more out of place with each step, less determined. He could be wrong. Perhaps there is no such man—no warm, gentle man who has warm, gentle thoughts. He leans against the stone surrounding a walled-in garden. (He knows this place from the dreams. He recognizes it.) He watches a few students walking past. They're all young and bright. They're all happy and sweet. All wise and becoming wiser each day.

He grips his suitcase a bit tighter, suddenly aware of how hot and tight the skin feels across his face.

Someone is coming up behind him—a man. Erik can feel his watch, the buttons on his trousers, the plain band on his finger. He can hear his breathing—slightly strained, like he's out of shape. He can hear his footsteps, hurried and irregular. The sound slows as he nears Erik.

"Are you lost?"

The voice tugs something at the back of his mind and Erik turns.

And there he is—dark eyes magnified by heavy spectacles, his smile wide and friendly. The skin creases at the corners of his eyes. His skin is dark, sort of golden or caramel; the way Erik's looks after many hours in the sun, but Erik's fairly sure this man looks this way all the time. His hair is mostly dark, wild and curly in a way that almost reminds Erik of Magda's hair on hot summer mornings. It twists and spirals—some has gone white or grey, but it's charming.

He looks kind.

Erik takes a deep breathe and smiles back as best he can.

"I was actually looking for someone. He told me to meet him here."

The man nods. "Is your friend a student?"

Erik hesitates. He isn't sure what Charles' connection to Oxford is. He takes a risk, watching the man's face as he does so.

"I'm not sure myself. Do you know anyone named Charles?"

The man laughs. It's a pleasant sound.

"I know many people named Charles. You'll have to be a touch more specific."

Erik grins, then forces his expression to cool. "He's telepathic."

The smile falls from the man's face. His expression shifts quickly from cheerful to shocked to frightened. When he speaks again, his voice is quieter, tense-sounding. "Who are you?"

Erik moves closer to the man, keeping his face blank, cold. "I am the man he asked to save him. He told me to find you. He said you're kind." Erik pauses, resisting the urge to tug intimidatingly on the man's watch. "Where is Charles?"

The man swallows hard. "Come with me."

Erik follows the man back into the building, down a poorly lit corridor. They enter a room that Erik recognises from one of the dreams: the room as big as a cathedral with seats going up the walls like a sports stadium. It's a classroom.  
Charles must have been here.  
There are three windows that light up the room with grey sunshine. The man sets his briefcase down on the floor in the center of the space, his back to Erik. When he turns around, his face is in shadow. He doesn't seem warm anymore. He seems stern, cold, unforgiving—like the teacher who hit Erik on the head with a dictionary for raising his hand in class. He wonders if this man hates Jews. He wonders how fast he can reach the door, tries to estimate how quickly the man will be able to react.

“How do you know about Charles Xavier?” the man asks, voice echoing, bouncing off the walls. Erik remembers the crushing sense of metal in his dream and blinks.

“He...” Erik hesitates, feeling suddenly too exposed. He needs to leave. He has to. He can't tell the truth. The man won't believe him. He'll laugh at Erik, kick him in the back of the knees, let him fall into the mud, cut him apart, press his face into the snow until he can't breathe.

But Charles trusts this man and Erik trusts Charles.

“He appeared in my dreams,” Erik says. His voice feels thick in his throat and he knows his English is becoming more accented because he's so  _ broken _ . “He saved me from my nightmares.”

The man's expression is unchanging, his arms crossed, his nostrils flared. Erik's eyes are burning. The silence stretches, tense and threatening.

Erik hasn't felt his terrified of reality—of the  _ present _ — in years.

“And why do you think...” The man, Erik suddenly notices, isn't very good at being intimidating. His face is becoming apologetic, his shoulders more relaxed. He gives an aggravated sigh as he tries to think of a response, his dark eyes focusing on the wall above Erik's head. “And what makes you think you're not just a barking lunatic?” His expression is still stern, but in the way Erik could remember his mother's being when he bothered her too many times when she was cooking.

“He left me and I thought he died, but then he appeared again and asked me to save him,” Erik explains, though even as the words leave his mouth he begins to notice their poor logic. “Don't try to tell me he isn't real, because I know he is. Where is he?”

He hadn't meant to shout, but he realises too late that he has. He hopes the man is as gentle as Charles thinks he is. Erik isn't really sure how much longer he can stand in this temple-room.

“Well, that—” the man starts but he's cut off by a bell ringing someplace far away, eyes wide. “Damn it,” he mutters, tugging up his sleeve to look at his watch. Erik isn't quite sure what's happening. The man gives Erik an exasperated look and releases a sharp breath through his nose.

“I have to go fetch my boy from his Hebrew school. I'm going to set you up in a room and I will meet you there again later today,” he says, his voice sharp. “Do  _ not _ try to go out by yourself, because we need to have a very important conversation.” The man picks up his briefcase and looks in it, muttering to himself, and Erik feels a sort of... relief.

Charles had good taste in acquaintances.

 

***

 

_Sharon sang lullabies to herself as she walked down the halls of Xavier Manor, her voice soft and low. She sang above where she ought, piping soprano notes her vocal chords were not made to reach. Cigarettes and half-full tumblers dangled from her fingers, silk dragged behind her._

_She used to quote poems, recite them off by heart. She would say each word with such feeling that Raven's heart would ache. Her voice was deep, half-whispering. Each stanza a secret. Each phrase said for Raven and Raven alone._

_And sometimes she would hum songs under her breath that Raven didn't recognize, press her fingers to the piano keys in the salon without making a sound. She would whisper softly, so softly:_

_“_ We are such stuff as dreams are made on. _”_

 

***

 

The man, who turns out to be named Nathan O'Brien, takes Erik to an inn a mile from the university and he makes Erik pay for his own room. The sheets are made of cotton and the bed is soft. The walls are covered with a cheap floral wallpaper; the floors are dark, unwaxed wood. There is a small window which shows the street below and is framed by lace curtains. The fireplace opposite the bed has been bricked in and replaced with an almost-new radiator tucked in beside the bed.

Erik sits and waits for O'Brien's return.

After a while, he falls asleep and dreams of his mother's face.

When he awakes from a knock at the door, it's almost evening. It feels strange to have slept. He isn't sure he should be sleeping at all. Charles is waiting and Charles needs him. He rises slowly—there is a crick in his neck from falling to the side in his sleep. The room seems off, somehow—unbalanced and half-real. There is another knock at the door and he stiffens, listening carefully.

Quietly as he can, he moves towards it, opens it as little as he can and drags the person outside into the room.

It's O'Brien—that makes sense. There's little chance of it being anyone else. His enemies are dead now, mostly, and so are his friends.

It's comforting, but it's not.

“What in God's name are you doing?” demands O'Brien, shaking off Erik's grip on his arm and brushing himself off, and Erik notices for the first time that he's Irish. That's interesting. Or it would be if Erik didn't feel so groggy and confused.

“I didn't know who you were,” Erik answers and he's not sure what language he's just spoken, but judging by O'Brien's reaction of annoyance, it's probably English.

“Oh—well! That makes _perfect_ sense!”

“ _Gut_ ,” Erik mutters, wishing he felt awake. He can't tell if this is a dream. He thinks he's going to fall down. He can't understand O'Brien anymore.

And somehow, he's sitting on the bed, his head feeling incredibly heavy, and O'Brien is holding him up by the shoulders.

“Are you alright?” he's saying and Erik nods, his ears feeling ready to explode. He's having trouble focusing and realises dimly that he's only looking at the collar of O'Brien's shirt, but he doesn't have the energy to look up.

O'Brien presses a cool hand to his forehead and Erik remembers his mother, kissing his cheeks to check for fever. He helps Erik lie down on the bed, lowering his head gently to the pillow.

“It's just exhaustion, I think,” he says softly. His face is warm, his words gentle. It's the man of Charles' memories—fatherly, kind. His palms are just slightly calloused as he smooths Erik's hair and lets him drift back to sleep.

 

***

 

_Charles' hands catch Erik's own, holding them tight between his palms. He's beautiful, his hair dark and wild over the pillow (covered with linen) in a shadowy room. The sun burns hot in the sky as they tumble onto the beach, laughing as Charles rolls on top of him, pinning him down by the wrists. His lips are so red, burning into Erik's mind as he presses them to his skin. He can feel Charles' pulse and he can feel something else, a set of arms wrapping around him from behind and pressing different (but familiar) lips to the back of his neck. He catches sight of dark curls._

_She blesses him—his angel when he is lost._

Thank you _, he sighs against her and Charles laughs and pulls him close._

_And they fall into the sand, icicles dripping and melting._

_And they fall together._

 

***

 

There is a clock chiming somewhere when Erik wakes up. The room is warm and close-feeling. He can't seem to open his eyes for sometime. He feels like he's just drunk a glass of wine a little too quickly and the world has suddenly become slower and far off, like sound passing through water. He doesn't want to move, not when the blankets are wrapped too close. It feels like the first morning of winter holidays when he was a child, when his mother would let him sleep as long as he wished and he always awoke to the smell of ginger and pastry.

He doesn't smell ginger or pastry—just cotton sheets and the strange, thick scent of tobacco.

Sleepily, only half-focusing, he counts the chimes and dozes.

_One. Two. Three._

His eyes flicker open, taking in the wooden room. He remembers it from the day before, though it takes him a moment to remember which way he's facing on the bed. There's day-light coming through the window, which seems strange for three. He can hear someone else breathing. He sits up.

It's that man... the warm man. He's smoking a pipe and looking a little annoyed as he writes in a leather-bound book. He glances up at Erik, his dark eyes a little magnified by his glasses.

“Good afternoon,” he says, his voice a little clipped. For a second, he looks like Erik's father, glasses hanging dangerously close to the tip of his nose, lips pursed as he makes neat notes in his accounts. His hair is grey in places, but still turns in spirals and curls. (Erik's father's hair did not do this. Erik's father actually looked very much like the officers who killed him, but he was better than them. Erik's father was a hero in the Great War, risked his life for a country that would one day hate him. His father won't be remembered as the brave lieutenant who fearlessly led his men through battle, but as a victim. That is the worst of all things—that his father would be remembered for dying and not for living.)

Erik blinks.

“Is it afternoon?” he asks, his jaw still loose from sleep. O'Brien smirks and lays his pen inside the book, using it to mark the page.

“Three o'clock,” he says, standing up. He's not very tall, but he's got a barrel chest which makes him seem more imposing. “You're lucky I could get away for the afternoon.” He wanders toward the window and gazes through it, a crease appearing between his eyebrows.

“You know... it's funny—” His voice is almost a whisper as he touches the lace curtains. Dappled light falls over his face, as though the sun is shining through tree branches instead of crocheted cotton. “You seem to care a lot about Charles—” he turns and looks at Erik— “but he never spoke about you.”

Erik knows this method. His keeps his face as closed as possible. “Do you believe that that says he was not attached to me?”

O'Brien shrugs and Erik tenses his jaw.

“He came to me for help. I believe that says a great deal.”

O'Brien nods, turning back to the window, and says, “And what do you know about Charles?”

Erik knows this test. He knows how to beat it.

“Why don't you tell me what  _you_ know about him?”

O'Brien laughs a little, the skin crinkling at the corners of his eyes, as he fingers the curtain, his gaze distant.

“You're a silly man,” he says, still smiling. “I can't tell... I can't work out if you're telling the truth or not. If you are, it's absurd and I shouldn't believe it in the first place. If not...” Erik sees his eyes refocus on the lace in his fingers. “Then I suppose I'll have to keep you away from him the best I can.”

The light from outside grows a little darker, like a cloud has just passed over the sun. Erik doesn't respond, waiting for O'Brien to continue.

“Well,” he sighs, taking a step back from the window and allowing his gaze to fall on Erik (who is suddenly and sharply aware that sitting on the bed, the sheets half-tangled around his legs, is not the best tactical position), “what do you think?”

“I don't know.”

“I thought as much.” Erik can hear shouts from the street below, distant and strange. It's odd to think there's a world outside this room, that there are other people—thousands of them—wandering past, living their own lives, worrying over their own fears.

How strange.

“You know, it's funny the way people try to categorise everyone else. They put them into two basic groups: normal or  _different_ .” O'Brien seems to be trying to look through him, his gaze sharpening. It's like he's becoming less solid as Erik watches, all strength, all solidity going to his eyes. “And a surprisingly small number of people are part of the “normal” category. It's the sane, the happy, the intelligent—but not too intelligent... But it's a narrow group and within that group there are those who would attempt to destroy those outside it.”

Something ignites in Erik's chest, but he tries to keep his exterior cold. His cheeks burn, his fingers tremble, but he doesn't say anything.

O'Brien expression, though, becomes suddenly soft and he drops his gaze.

“I saw the numbers on your arm.”

And the fire turns to acid, melting through the bottom of his stomach. Erik realises that he's crying.

“Then I suppose I am within the “different” category,” Erik says, his voice too quiet. He feels foolish. O'Brien watches him without saying anything. There's a pause, a silence stretching and spinning through the air around them. It's thick, tense. Erik is afraid to move, afraid he'll break apart.

There's a look in O'Brien's eye, the look he has in Charles' memories that Erik recognises. It's the look he had when he helped Erik to the bed the night before. It's warm, kind, gentle.

Fatherly...

_Soft_ ...

_They tumble onto the soft sand, Charles' eyes bluer than any sky as he laughs_ ...

“You should know,” O'Brien begins, his voice close to a whisper, “Charles... he's not always been... he's...” He swallows thickly and Erik finds he's able to focus once more on his face, on the lines around his mouth as he speaks. (It's calming, though O'Brien seems to be becoming more nervous, more tense.) “He killed someone once... with his... ability.”

Light flashes on the frame of O'Brien's glasses. 313784 screams (guilt) through Erik's memory, tears clearing tracks in the blood and dirt on his face.

“That's alright,” he says, too softy (again). “So have I.” (He's lucky that O'Brien doesn't hear. He's lucky and he waits to hear the whole of the story.

 

***

 

_Raven can still feel Hank's warm breath on the back of her neck as she curls closer into his chest, pressing herself flush to his skin. His arms were still wrapped around her, like the pull-down bar on a roller coaster. His hold tightens a little as she moves closer, letting her know he's awake too._

_“Raven?” he whispers, his voice still soft and slow from sleep. She hums in response and he presses his nose to her neck. “Just stay here a while,” he breathes into her skin, his lips brushing one of her scales. “Don't go.”_

_She closes her eyes, memorizing the feeling of his skin against hers, and murmurs so softly it's almost just a small movement of the air— “I love you.”_

_Hank pulls her a little closer. She can feel the pulse of his wrist on her arm._

_“I love you too.”_

Ani ohev ote'ch gam.

 

***

 

Charles can't move. He's curled in on himself. He scratches at his thighs. He feels nothing.

 _Poison courses through him_.

“ _It's for your own good, Xavier._ ”

He feels nothing.

The scraps of the envelope are still littered over the soft floor with him. His throat is raw from screaming, but he can't stop. He feels like something's been ripped out of him. As though, if he isn't holding the letter, it never really existed in the first place. It's a fantasy. He's mad, after all.

He's not real—only a dream—only a ghost.

That's all he's ever been.

The lights go out.

He stops screaming and lifts his head. It's dark. It's all dark. Dark and empty. There's nothing left. There's nothing in the world. His thoughts reverberate around the room. He thinks of Raven, of the glimmers of blue he could sense in her mind—bright, tugging something in his memory, but he doesn't know what.

It's dark all around him.

It's dark.

He's alone.

 

***

 

Erik has always been ready for death.

He's been ready for it since the day his mother died—shot in front of him, her face slack, her eyes unfocused. He's been ready for death since the day he buried Magda. He's been ready since the day Schmidt first cut into him. He's been ready since he was alone and all his life had run out, run dry.

But as he stares at the photograph in the file which O'Brien shows him—an innocent-looking building: white walls, black roof; the window grates are the only thing that seems out-of-place. It could be a home—it could be a good home. But it's not. It's a prison. It's so unlike the one which trapped Erik that it's jarring.

O'Brien tells him about the other prisoners—they have gifts. (Incredible, beautiful, magnificent gifts—O'Brien's voice trembles as he speaks about them. He has been visiting the asylum since Charles was younger, in tribute to the incredible mind which he was asked to verify. The doctors had thought Charles was inventing fantasies with genetics, but they brought in O'Brien and a sort of partnership began.) He tells Erik about a girl who once lived there who could see the future. (She's died since, which, according to O'Brien, was a mercy.) He tells him about a boy who can trick the eye and the mind, cast illusions better than any magician.

And Erik realises, which absolute certainty, that he's going to save them all. Every last prisoner—freed: their gifts allowed to flourish and inspire.

He's going to save them all.

And so he begins to lay his plans.

O'Brien tells Erik all he can about the asylum, but, in the end, it isn't very much. He isn't trained to mark the information Erik needs. (Erik doesn't fault him for it. He probably spends most of his time within the asylum wanting to get out.) It's not enough to make anything sure or certain.

But that's alright. Erik has walked into situations with less intelligence. He was Mossad's number one on-the-fly agent, promoted higher for his ability to enter a mess of an operation and  _ miraculously _ come out with another success. (“ _ God has blessed you with quite a gift! _ ” one of his superiors once said. Erik isn't sure if this is entirely true, wasn't sure at the time. The only reason he remembers for being able to turn things around so rapidly is that he just wanted to go back home. He knew his duty, knew he wouldn't be able to rest at night knowing he  _ wasn't _ doing it, but the knowledge that when it was over he would be able to bury his face in Magda's curls—that was the only power he had.)

(He wouldn't be going home to Magda this time: he would be rebuilding, creating anew with Charles. Charles—who is nothing like Magda, who lives in a world of cold sunshine and misting rain—is what he will come home to. And that's how he has been blessed.)

O'Brien offers to enter the asylum with him, but Erik tells him to go to his home and wait. They will need an outside person—an ally, if necessary—and Erik will need to know where he is.

And so he approaches the gates (the wall they connect to—it's too much like—he fears so strongly for a moment—) alone. There's a single guard leaning against the wall just inside the gate and smoking lazily. According to O'Brien, he should be the only obstacle in Erik's path.

“The patients are kept in such a state that there's really no way they'd be able to attempt escape and, in almost all of their cases, their families don't want them anymore. There are only three guards, actually. The doctors should mostly be in their offices and there may be a couple nurses around, but it's unlikely. Most of the experiments are done in the morning or at night—but, you know, on Sunday, they isolate all the patients in their rooms. There are exceptions, but... in general, that's what's done. Charles told me about it once...”

Erik hones in on the metal of the guard's belt buckle and tugs as sharply as he can. The guard is jerked to the side and his head cracks against one of the bars on the gate.

Simple. Once he's inside the grounds (it's just a strip of various weeds, occasionally interrupted by a crop of grass), things are a bit more complicated.

He unlocks the front doors without keys and leaves them unlocked. He may need to escape quickly.

The issue is that O'Brien has only ever been in the “observatories”—the rooms used for any activities which the prisoners want to do (there's a place for the doctors to watch, to spy, to  _ hurt _ )—but, as he tells Erik, he doubts Charles will be there. He'll be in a cell, alone, which is more complicated because O'Brien isn't sure which one.

“But they're downstairs,” he explained, sketching a far too sparse map of the asylum. “Over fifty rooms, but even now there aren't that many patients. You just follow the main hall—the doctors have offices through here and here are the observatories and here is the kitchen, but at the end there are two staircases: one goes up to the other rooms and the staff's quarters, but you don't need to worry about those. You'll go downstairs and that's where the rooms will be.”

The wood floor is warped from water damage, slanted and remarkably unnerving. Erik neatly locks all the doors along the hallway and fuses the metal. (Now they're trapped—it's what they deserve.)

He can hear sounds from the upstairs and he reaches out his senses for the metal of the staircase. He can feel it—old and slightly rusting—and carefully unscrews a few crucial points of the structure. There's no point in crushing the whole thing. It would be too loud: metal crashing down, echoing—he doesn't need to alert more people than necessary.

And then he hears a footstep from the very top of the stairwell and there's a creak as the structure collapses.

He sprints forward—catching hold of the watch chain and the buttons. He lowers the person down and sees that it's a nurse. Her hair is brown, her face flushed from fear as he sets her to the ground in front of him. She's just barely on the solid ground and her lips are slightly parted as she stares at him, frightened.

“Who are you?” she asks. Her eyes are a sort of green color and he can see that her hair is more red than brown. Auburn. He takes her by the neck and presses her against the wall.

“Where are your prisoners?” He pushes into her skin—he can feel the ridges of her throat. She makes a choking noise and he pushes harder. “Where are they?”

She scratches at his wrist, her face turning redder, some of her hair falling loose from its ponytail. She's trying to speak—he loosens his grip a little.

“Professor... O'Brien... said—”

He lets go of her throat, but before she can move, presses his forearm across her chest.

“What did he say to you?”

“That there was a man...” She struggles for air, her voice rough from pressure. “That there was a man who wanted... who wanted to help free them...”

Erik takes a slow breath, staring at her. “O'Brien told you that?”

“He knows that I... that I don't—I mean—that I wanted—want to... I don't know... They don't deserve this. You have to understand! They're not mad—”

Erik steps back and she slumps against the wall, flecks of old paint clinging to her white uniform. She looks up at him— _ glares _ at him, with an intensity he used to associate with only a very angry Magda. He swallows.

“What's your name?” she asks. Her voice is a little less tight. She sounds Scottish.

“Erik Lehnsherr.”

She nods. “Moira MacTaggert,” she says. “How can I help?”

Erik looks around, considering. “What kind of transport will we need? How well can the prisoners move?” He isn't sure why he asks her this. It's from the way Charles would shake in the dreams, the way his legs were numb in the dream. The nurse shakes her head a little, her lips pressed together.

“They're injected—each of them—they're injected with... well, it's like an anaesthetic so they can be more easily controlled. They first started it on this one...” She swallows thickly and stands a bit straighter. “This one man. He's the one you're looking for, I think. But you have to—none of them can move well, really. You'll need a vehicle of some kind.”

“Get me one. I'll get the rest.”

She grabs him before he can turn. Her grip is strong. Her eyes seem to burn with something Erik doesn't completely recognise.

“There are two guests down there. Please... Make sure you don't hurt them.”

Erik nods and she runs down the hall as he steps back toward the lower set of stairs. (He'll be able to navigate around the wreckage of the top set. That's the part that will be easy.)

He jumps. There is sound—someone is yelling, a door slams shut (it's a heavy sound). He can hear voices echoing back towards him. He's so tense, reaching out towards any metal he can feel below him. He can feel the wiring, the bases of lightbulbs and unscrews the one that hangs directly above his head, rearranging his plan as the glass reaches his fingertips.

He can feel the metal of a syringe, of heavy doors, of a small necklace.

Interesting.

He takes a deep breath and focuses on the bases of the lights in the hallways below and  _ pulls _ , quietly making his way down the stairs. He can hear glass smashing and reaches again for that syringe. He latches on to the belt buckle, the watch and throws the doctor back. (It must be a doctor. It has a syringe.) He raises the lightbulb and screws it into place. He can see the hallway now, the plain doors on either side and tries not to think too hard about them. He can't see the other sources of the voices though. He can sense metal of two, can feel the iron of their blood and the metal on their clothes. They must be the guests.

He moves forward, unscrewing the bulb as he passes it and sending the space into darkness again. He sends it forward, nearer to the pair, and screws it in.

He can  _ see _ the guests now—a blonde girl, small, soft-looking, and a tall boy with thick glasses and mousy hair. They look very young, but they're not really children. The boy has his arms around the girl, as though to protect her. Erik sees, with satisfaction, that it  _ is _ a doctor sprawled on the floor behind them. Good.

He stops walking and looks back and forth between the pair. They look frightened. He hesitates and then says the only thing he can think of:

“Where is Charles?”

 

***

 

“What?” Raven says the word without realizing. Every part of her is tense. She can feel her pulse throbbing in her neck. Her blood burns in her veins. She's scared. She wants to close her eyes, to hide in the dark behind her eyelids.

“I have come for Charles,” the man says. He has a slight accent, but Raven doesn't know where it's from. He's not American, but she's not sure he's English. He stands with a slight stoop, his hands hanging loose by his sides, his face half-hidden with shadow.

“Who are you?” Hank asks, harshly. His arms are warm around Raven.

“My name is Erik Lehnsherr,” he says. There's no emotion in his voice. He's like a sort of statue—immobile, but still living, still breathing. His right eye twitches a little as he speaks. “Do either of you know Charles Xavier?”

Raven swallows, but steps forward. Hank automatically loosens his grip as she does so. “He's my brother,” she says. “What do you want with him?”

The man—Erik Lehnsherr—straightens up a little, lifts up his chin like he's proud or something.

“I need to save him—him, and all the other people here. They are being kept because they are...  _ different _ . They are not mad. They are prisoners.” Raven thinks suddenly of the dusty copy of  _ Alice in Wonderland _ in that locked up room.  _ We're all mad here _ . She remembers reading that quote when she was small, a different copy balanced on her knees.

She pauses. There's something about the man... Raven understands body language, can read it as easily as a printed page—it comes with her gift. He's not lying to her. She can see it in his hands, in the way he holds his mouth. He's not lying.

She licks her lips carefully, thinking. “In what way are they ' _ different _ '?”

Erik Lehnsherr hesitates and it's so interesting to watch. His expression so completely guarded, but he swallows and blinks twice in quick succession. His shoulders are tense. He's nervous.

“They're gifted,” he says finally and raises one of his hands towards her. The clasp of her necklace trembles and he smiles threateningly. “—Like me.”

He steps forward and she's very aware of how tall he is—almost as tall as Hank—and how sharp the lines of his face are. He's like a knife, like a weapon. “Your brother is powerful—but he is going to die here.” His voice is barely more than a whisper, but it's charged with emotion. His eyes are bright, his jaw tight. “I need to save him.”

Raven's throat feels sort of stuck. She thinks of the warm feeling that spread through her system when Charlie held her hand, the recognition in his gaze.

“So do I,” she says. She breaks eye contact and turns back to the door. “He's in here.” She kneels down to take the keys from Gaskill (she really should feel a lot worse about him getting hurt, but she doesn't—he's only unconscious, not dead), but Hank puts his hand on her shoulder and she looks back up. The lock on the door clicks with the slightest twitch of Lehnsherr's wrist.

Incredible...

Charlie has gone quiet, but he's still folded in on himself, his hands gripping the back of his neck. He squints in the small pool of light, blinking slowly. His face is still flushed, but the rest of his skin is so pale, it looks almost blue. (Of course it does—he's her brother.) His mouth is slack as he focuses slowly on Lehnsherr. There's something in his face, in the way his shoulders tense up, the way his fingernails dig into his skin—there are tears in his eyes.

“ _ Erih... _ ” God, his face—his voice cracks around the word. The air is ringing around them and Raven looks towards Lehnsherr as he falls to his knees in front of Charlie. He's crying and Raven feels a little uncomfortable watching him but is unable to look away as he takes Charlie's face in his hands and presses their foreheads together. His shoulders are shaking—actually, all of him is trembling, as through about to break apart from emotion.

“Charles...” he whispers. Charles is breathing hard, as though he too is crying, but his face is dry. Awkwardly—as though the motion is far more difficult than it would seem—he wraps his arms around Lehnsherr's shoulders and Lehnsherr reopens his eyes. He stands, lifting Charlie easily in his arms. His face is stony, his eyes burning through tears.

“We need to get the rest,” he says.

 

***

 

_Sharon holds him sometimes—just to look at him, just to feel him against her. He's magical—a magical, magical thing. Her hand is on his cheek and he is warm against her chest. She can feel that, can feel the_ love _that seem to flow out of his tiny body. She loves the way his mouth sits open, puffy and relaxed. She loves every curl on his head, every freckle scattered over his cheeks like stars._

_She can feel how warm and happy he is, can see the way she looks through his eyes; bright and beautiful, like an angel looking down on him._

_There's nothing more beautiful than this._

 

***

 

The doors sing to him as he steps back into the hall—a low hum that vibrates in his chest. Charles is too light in his arms, too narrow. (Charles isn't speaking properly and Erik has a feeling it's from the band around his head, but he doesn't know if Charles needs it, so Erik leaves it be.) He doesn't need to move his hands out to wrench the doors from the walls. It's too loud, but it's faster than anything else. Charles' sister rushes forward to explain to them what's happening.

The boy voices the problem that has just occurred to Erik.

“This is going to take too long,” he says softly. Erik tenses his jaw, focusing on the bent remains of the doors.

“It doesn't have to.”

It's a moment's work to bend the metal into several roughly chair-like shapes. The boy and Charles' sister help the prisoners into them (one of them has wings—beautiful, white wings, like a painting of an angel. They've been strapped to his back, which makes Erik want to pull the asylum down to its foundations, but he can't bring himself to.) and Erik lifts each one up the stairs.

Of course, all his work to make the ascent steady and smooth is spoiled when he reaches the top of the stairs, just behind the couple—just in time for a large van to smash through the door. Several of the prisoners scream (they're unused to sound, to life and its dangers) and Charles curls himself against Erik's chest. (It makes his heart beat faster and his eyes burn, but that's alright.)

Nurse MacTaggert steps out of the driver's side, looking shaken and nervous.

“So... apparently I'm a bit out of practice with my driving,” she admits. Erik laughs without realising that he's started. It forces itself up from his stomach and he pulls Charles a little closer.

 

***

 

Erik doesn't drive the van—Hank (that is the boy's name) does, though he's obviously unused to British driving rules. (They almost collide with other cars a few times, which frightens some of the prisoners, but they calm after a while. They're all young—the eldest is perhaps thirty—and Erik notices that, after some time, they begin to shout and laugh. Erik remembers what they are feeling—the relief that follows uncertainty—and finds it's infectious.)

He has his arms around Charles, locking him into place beside him. Charles tries sometimes to talk, but the words are slurred and confused and Erik can't understand him. When Raven (Charles' sister—that's her name) is talking to Hank in the front and Nurse MacTaggert is talking to the prisoners, Charles finally looks up at his face again. His eyes are so blue—bluer than the Mediterranean, bluer than the clearest sky.

Erik closes his own eyes for a moment and reopens them. Charles is still looking at him. He touches his hand slowly to Erik's.

_ Break it _ .

Erik looks at the band of metal that sits so tightly over Charles' skin, it's cutting in. It  _ is _ metal—he's sure of it, but it doesn't obey him when he pulls it. He takes Charles' head in his hands and, as gently as he can, turns him to look at the piece. It's hinged on the sides, so he focuses again on those.

They snap and the band breaks in two.

And there's Charles' mind, crashing around his, like waves. Jumbled, almost frightening—hundreds of emotions all at once: gratitude, fear, expectation, love...

_ I didn't mean to call to you, _ he confesses to Erik, clear and smooth.  _ I didn't want you to see me. _

Erik presses his cheek to Charles' forehead and cries for a moment.

“There was no life without you,” Erik whispers as the van bumps on a pothole. “I need you.”

He can feel Charles smile in his thoughts—can see that boy with the red lips and dark hair, the freckly skin, the long fingers. (Charles' fingers are short and Erik thinks they suit him better.)

_ Please stay with me. _

Erik smiles now and turns a little so he can feel Charles' skin on his lips. “Let's build a life together.”

 

***

 

It's Hank who helps Lehnsherr to make contact with his “associate”; it's Hank who manages to get them a private plane within the hour; and it's Hank who goes back to the hotel and gets their luggage from their rooms.

(There's a moment, when he's gone, where Charlie, who is sitting with Lehnsherr, one hand curled against the other man's chest, catches her eye and smiles a little. She gets a feeling like something's just lit up in the corner of her vision and a voice whispers in her mind:  _ Thank you, Raven _ . It makes her cry a bit, but she manages to cover up her tears for the most part.)

Nurse MacTaggert helps them move the patients from the van to the plane. She's brisk and rough with Raven and Lehnsherr, but soft-spoken with the patients. Charlie touches her fingers when she passes him and she smiles at him. She eventually seats herself just behind the cockpit, removing her shoes and placing them in her lap as though she's just come home from work. (She promises to help Raven with the patients and that she'll find a home for them. She even promises to take care of all of them herself—fifteen patients with one nurse—and something clicks into place in the back of Raven's mind, but she puts the idea aside for later discussion.)

She and Hank sit down at the back of the plane. It's not very big, though it's certainly not small—but Hank pulls her close anyway and sighs.

“Well... this didn't turn out exactly as planned,” he says slowly and Raven nods, feeling suddenly very tired with her head against his chest. “What are we going to do with these people?”

“I think we should help them,” she says—her voice is soft like a whisper, but Hank is close enough to hear. “I mean...” She hesitates, unsure of his reaction. “I mean, I think they should have the chance... The chance to grow up like we did.”

“I didn't grow up with you, Raven.”

“Yes, you did. I mean... You grew up _like_ me—free to do what we wanted, with people around to support us. They... They're like us. They should have that too.”

“I see what you mean.”

“It's just... I think we could help them.”

“I agree.” There's a smile in Hank's voice and Raven finds herself smiling too. She realizes that she dropped the letter from Sharon in the asylum, crumpled into a ball, left.

She watches as Erik presses his lips to the top of Charlie's head, his eyes tightly shut, and closes her own.

“I love you,” Hank whispers and she smiles wider.

 

***

 

When Charles was young, he would lie in his bed each night in the asylum and reach for Isabella's mind. Her thoughts lit up the dark—so bright, so vivid. They were like brother and sister, running—through imaginary worlds, hand in hand; laughing as they tumbled in the grass; staring up at star-filled skies...

A world of their imaginations—other people's recollections and events that would one day occur. Sometimes, they would bring their own pasts in as well: small things, small memories.

He never saw Isabella in person, never knew what she really looked like. She never saw him either, only experienced him through his projection of himself—much more whole than the real thing. In her mind, when they spoke in her mind, she was blue all over, her skin shining with little bits of texture and scales. ( _Blue_.) Her hair was red and soft, but like fire, and her eyes were golden like a cat's.

_This is a girl I see,_ she explained, pressing his imaginary fingers to her imaginary body. She looked like a fairy, like an elf—like magic.  _She'll care about you so much_ .

She conjured up a world—a bright green hillside with a cloudless sky. It was the place where Charles' parents had once taken him for a picnic. Grass prickly, with little holes from where insects ate the blades. Trees rustled in the warm breeze. She bent over him, tall and thin and  _beautiful_ in the imaginary sunshine, pressed her forehead to his and said:

“ _I have no life to live._ ”

Snow began to fall around them, piling up in the grass.

_You'll be free one day, Charles,_ she whispered in his thoughts.  _You'll climb out a window and be free. I can see it all—your whole life. It will be beautiful one day._

Snowflakes caught in her eyelashes, stark white against the blue of her imaginary skin.

And each morning, when Charles awoke, the details would slide from his mind like oil on water.

And he wouldn't remember a thing.


	4. Peace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the epilogue which took stupidly long, considering how short it is. Let's just blame it on university though the reason is more of a lack of inspiration than a lack of time. I hope you all enjoy the ending. Your support has meant a great deal to me. Have a happy 2013!

> _Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot, she kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking: `Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah,_ THAT’S _the great puzzle!’_
> 
> —Lewis Carroll,  _Alice in Wonderland_ , Chapter 2: The Pool of Tears

_My darling Charlie,_

_I suppose you must be quite grown up now. You must be a full adult. I imagine you look like your father: handsome and soft. He used to have that little mustache you know, but I'm afraid it's now become terribly unfashionable, so I imagine you clean-shaven, like the young fellows I see at the clubs. You're probably terribly silly, like your father, but bright too. I hope you're not like me, except maybe you have my cheekbones, which used to get a great many compliments when I was younger woman._

_I hope you're well and that the doctors have been able to help you. I only ever wanted you to be happy and healthy and I'm afraid I was little help with either. But perhaps you're better now; perhaps you're happier,—that would be a true blessing._

 

***

 

His hair grows back again. It keeps his head warm when it's cold (and Erik likes to run his fingers through it and Charles can hear him mentally counting strands). He supposes it must be a sort of foolish pride that he has his hair, but, as Raven says to him, there's no fault with a little pride; there's no fault in finding beauty in oneself. (Raven has a mind like a bright light—powerful, constant. A sort of fiery intellect and determination that Charles finds he likes. She's got a loud mind, but it's full of color and locked rooms— _I do need to have some privacy you know—_ and memories kept in shelves to be pulled out when needed. She's got a mind like nothing Charles has dealt with so closely before—like a trap, like a war game, like a sun: it's _exciting_.) She takes his face between her hands and says, “ _You are gorgeous, Charlie. I mean it._ ” And he finds himself—slowly, cautiously—believing her, finding the brush of truth behind her words.

His hair grows out, but the scars don't fade. He didn't really expect them to.

He doesn't actually live in the manor. He doesn't think he can. It's too full of things he doesn't want to recall (and new things he doesn't know). They spent a month there, but it was painful and increasingly loud and so Raven got the old gardener's house refurbished and he and Erik live there instead. (He is never quite able to remaster walking for great distances—only a few steps at a time, really. His muscles have been left unused too long, according to Moira— _guilt—_ and his body doesn't move the way it used to. But Erik lifts him easily up the stairs each night and Charles trusts Erik not to trap him, just as Erik trusts Charles not to break him.)

(They're equals in power and they love each other too much to—.)

(Raven is always a little uncomfortable with what they are to one another, but she doesn't try to stop it and Charles thinks each day of thanking her for it, but never does.)

The house is small, but it's the perfect size for just him and Erik. The windows capture the sunlight. It's sunny, those first few months. In July, Erik lays him down on the grass outside and the sunlight hits his face and he doesn't mind that his skin burns. Erik keeps an aloe plant from then on and Charles refuses to learn his lesson.

(He falls in love with that smile—the one that never fades on Erik's lips. His mind opens up to Charles' like a door. They keep a few secrets close—they cannot change everything they are—but consciousness _flows_ and Charles wonders how he entered paradise in a mind full of snow.)

Summer is incredibly hot that first year. Charles sweats and burns and Erik's skin turns brown and his hair turns ginger. It's handsome and Charles can feel Erik's comfort with the hot air and the bright sun. (It's his home, after all.) Charles doesn't change much himself, but he gets stronger each day and sleeps better each night—the world growing quieter each day as the music of Erik's mind becomes louder and louder—summer heat sliding through their windows.

Soon, summer chills itself to autumn and the house stays warm and Erik wrap around him and Charles feels, for the first time, completely free.

And he chooses his life as he counts Erik's breaths.

 

***

 

_I decided to write you this letter because I've learned recently that I'm very sick and that there's no chance of me getting better. It's alright. I've led a good life with few regrets. But the thing I regret most of all is that I've never got to know you properly. I never got to sit with you by the fire as I used to imagine, listening to you and your father arguing over books and such things. I never got to see you married, to be humbled by having to make myself less attractive than your bride. (But I would do it for you, my darling.) I wish I could have had these moments; that I could have watched you grow up into a beautiful young man. Nothing would make me happier than to take it all back, to sit beside you on those nights when you were so terribly upset and hold your hand._

_I regret not being a mother to you and I always will. My punishment is having to die without getting to see you one last time. It's fitting, I think. I selfishly sent you away and so I must be without you at the end. But I am not alone. There's a little girl, Raven, I adopted. She was abandoned, I think, and she broke into the house. She looked like a little elf the first time I saw her. She has a special gift, like you did. (I always knew, Charlie, about the things you could do. I remember picking you up when you were a baby and understanding, suddenly, exactly what I was to you at that moment. And I loved you forever then.) You and Raven have been the most beautiful things to enter my life: my two gifted children. I have been blessed twice with blessed children and I thank God for it._

 

***

 

It starts as a home and becomes, somehow, a school. Raven is behind it, which surprises her as much as it surprised Hank when she suggested it. A school, specifically for people like them. There must be others—and they find them, over time.

The school is her idea, but the name is Hank's. When he suggests it, she cries and hugs him, because it's beautiful and perfect. She feels him smile into her shoulder.

Within four months, the number of students (they start with those rescued for the asylum) doubles. Within another month, it triples. The students are mostly orphans or children who have been abandoned like she was. (It makes the name more perfect, she thinks.)

Erik is the one who brings in Professor Nathan O'Brien (but Charles also, quietly, vouches for him—a smile in his thoughts), who proves to be kind and invaluable. He and Hank are soon close friends, slowly gathering a collection of protégés and working into the night, unraveling genetics. More invaluable is Nurse MacTaggert. She works with the rescued patients, helping them to exercise and designing diets and physical routines. She cares for each new student, treating any who have been injured along their way. She's priceless, in her creased blouses and scuffed shoes. Raven is thankful for her.

It takes about a year for her to understand her life is actually real—that it's not just some passing dream or idea. (Hank doesn't help it feel any more real, not when he's laughing into the skin of her neck, his breath warm.) It takes her about six months to give up her old blonde 'form' entirely. She makes the change when a government worker comes to “check” the newly founded school and she answers the door, red-haired and blue, wearing a black-and-white suit and black-and-white pumps. She never tells anyone that the government worker screams at the sight of her. (She's never going to be impervious, but that's going to have to be alright.)

It takes her and Hank another two years to get married—quietly at the courthouse. (She pretends to be a thin, pale-skinned brunette woman and he pretends not to be nervous.) It takes six years for an identical school to be founded in Europe. It's named after Nathan, actually—inspired by his publication “The Next Step”, which gives the 'gifted' the more official name of “mutants”.

(Her school keeps it's name and it's own terms. It's important, Raven thinks, to remember the beginnings.)

There's nothing particularly different about the manor—except for the noise about her pupils, growing up together. But the biggest differences from the outside are the small, extra house for her brother (she stands outside the door one day, just to see how long it takes Charles to spot her mind) and a small bronze plaque by the gate, giving the school its name.

_The Sharon Xavier Institute for the Gifted_.

It's a home.

 

***

 

_I only hope my selfishness has made your life better and happier, because, at the time, those were my only reasons. I hope you're handsome and bright and inspiring to everyone you meet. You inspired me, you know. You still do. You're my bright star, my darling, beautiful Charlie._

_Goodbye, my sweet, and may you have a long and happy life._

_Love, Your mother._

 

***

 

Charles dreams in waves—waves of light and warm and the smell of grass on a sunny day. It fills his mind until the morning, when Erik opens his eyes again. Charles breathes slowly beside him. He's growing healthier, his nose and cheeks still red from his burn. His skin is becoming freckled and it doesn't seem to sit so close to his bones anymore. His muscles are developing. He's becoming a person.

Erik wonders if he's changing too. He feels more content and he sleeps more. He likes to sleep now, even if Charles likes the house too warm and snores in his sleep.

(Raven asks Erik if he wants to teach at the Institute, but he doesn't. He wants to stay in his too-warm home.)

He feels alive now—alive the way he was in Israel, with all of Magda's curls spread out on the pillows and the sounds of the street below coming through their window.

He wakes in the morning and watches Charles, who might be asleep or might just be too lazy to get up. He is like this sometimes—lazy and silly and reluctant to move even when he has to. Erik is the one who does most of the work in the house, but he likes it. It makes him feel alive, like Charles' breath on his skin, the feel of his thoughts when he dreams.

Erik opens his eyes and slides out of bed. The room is cold—too cold for Charles—so he moves to go downstairs to light a fire. It takes only ten minutes (the logs are kept very dry), but it will take time for the heat to spread through the house, so he climbs the stairs again.

It's strange, the shape of Charles under the covers as he stirs, blinking slowly and smiling.

_Hello, Erik_.

Erik smiles back _I love you_ and walks across the room to the window, opening the curtains to let in more light.

And suddenly, there is snow.


End file.
